UPData

A data curation experiment at the University of Porto

using DSpace

João Rocha da Silva FEUP

Cristina Ribeiro DEI- FEUP / INESC-Porto

João Correia Lopes DEI- FEUP / INESC-Porto

Eugénia Matos Fernandes U.PORTO Reitoria (Central Services)

Contents

• Motivation– Goals of the experiment

• Our users, the researchers– Researcher concerns & needs– Adding data curation to the research workflow

• Building a repository– Using DSpace for research data curation

• Conclusions

MOTIVATION

The “standard” research workflow

However…

GOALS

Evaluating the research data management effort

• Interviewing researchers in several areas• Collecting data samples• Documenting use cases for research data• Identifying data curation practices

Project Phases

Phase 1 : Interviews

Our users, the researchers

• …are not data preservation experts

• ...use many document formats

• ...create and gather data from many sources

Researcher concerns and needs

• Repositories cannot be “graveyards for data”, they have to provide effective ways to access the stored data

• Data has to be well annotated or else cannot be reused (experiment contexts, meanings of variables…)

• Better ways to find data (e.g. domain-specific restrictions and not just generic metadata)

Researcher concerns and needs

• Easy sharing of data (e.g. sending a link to the place where a user can find a specific dataset)

• Researchers can be cited by their peers through the datasets that they offer

• Ensuring reproducibility of scientific findings

Project Phases

Phase 2 : Determine

changes to current workflow

ADDING A DATA CURATION STEP TO THE RESEARCH WORKFLOW

The role of the “Data Curator”

Data curation meeting

Annotating data

After the meeting

Data+Metadata in Excel format

How other researchers will see it

• Explore• Filter• Download just what you need

Project Phases

Phase 3 : Build tools to

support the workflow

Project Phases

Phase 4 : Test tool

using real world

data

DATA DEPOSIT- DEMO

VIDEO 1

DATA EXPLORING AND DOWNLOAD- DEMO

VIDEO 2

FIND DATASETS- DEMO

VIDEO 3

Conclusions + Future Work

• Some data management requirements of the researchers at U.Porto have been analysed and approached

• Dspace has been successfully customized to include Data Exploration capabilities for tabular data

• Future Work• Gather feedback on the data repository extension from the

group of researchers who have been interviewed

Thank you

João Rocha da Silva joaorosilva@gmail.com

Cristina Ribeiro mcr@fe.up.pt

João Correia Lopes jlopes@fe.up.pt