Category: Mendeley Data Advisory Board

Meet the Mendeley Data advisory board: Amy Neeser

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In this series of interviews, we meet some of the members of the Mendeley Data advisory board and get their thoughts on the role of research data management (RDM), and how Mendeley Data can contribute to this.

Amy NeeserName: Amy Neeser

Job Title: Consulting and Outreach Lead at University California Berkeley (UC Berkeley)

Bio: Amy is a data librarian working in Research IT. She coordinates the consulting efforts across the Data Management and Research Computing programs to offer a holistic approach to data and computation. She also facilitates their community, partnership, and outreach programs. She previously worked as the Research Data Management Program Manager at UC Berkeley, as Data Curation Librarian at the University of Michigan, and as a science librarian at the University of Minnesota.

What motivates you each morning?

I am passionate about research. I love that I get to help enable world changing research by helping Berkeley faculty, students, and staff address the challenges and opportunities associated with research data and computing.

What challenges do you want to see RDM fix?

There are two main things really. In terms of practicality, I would love to see RDM really focus on sensitive data needs. Currently this is often managed at an institutional level, but it would make a huge impact if there was a nationwide, or product-based solution that could address this. That would be huge.

Secondly, I think RDM is vital for reproducibility. Technologies like containers and Jupyter Notebooks enable users to share not only their data but also the software, versions, and specs to analyze it. As these types of technologies data management practices become more commonly used, it will be much easier to share and reproduce results!

What excites you most about Mendeley Data?

I like how the different modules and features available can easily interact with each other. And it’s practical, supporting the data management process.

I feel that Mendeley Data Repository can help institutions address the reproducibility crisis, and it can save the need for institutions to create a repository at a local level.

What do you think the future holds for RDM?

I don’t think RDM can or should be “owned” by one unit or department, such as the library. It’s too big an area to be managed alone, and different players bring difference expertise and experience. It calls for a combined effort.

A lot of the questions that I get are in the active phase of the research lifecycle and often include sensitive data. IT can help with these issues, but also needs the library’s expertise around the beginning (planning, finding) and end (publishing, sharing, preserving) of the research lifecycle to provide researchers with a holistic approach to their scholarship.

More researchers from across domains use data and computational resources, and I think IT must be closely aligned with the library and other important players on campus such as the office of research.

 

Find out more about Mendeley Data here.

Meet other members of the Mendeley Data advisory board here.

Meet the Mendeley Data advisory board: David Groenewegen

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In this series of interviews, we meet some of the members of the Mendeley Data advisory board and get their thoughts on the role of research data management (RDM), and how Mendeley Data can contribute to this.

David GroenewegenName: David Groenewegen

Job Title: Director, Research, Monash University Library

Bio: David Groenewegen is the Director, Research. He is responsible for Library client services to the science, technology, engineering and medicine disciplines at Monash University, as well as the contribution the Library makes to the University’s research activity.

David has wide-ranging experience working in the areas of electronic information provision and related technology. Before returning to Monash University Library in 2013 he spent four years as a Director of the Australian National Data Service, where he was involved with the development and implementation of data management solutions across the Australian university sector.

What motivates you each morning?

The thing I most love doing is trying to find ways to help our researchers do their job better, which in the library means giving them the tools, training and resources they need, at the time they need it, and in ways that simplifies their life, not complicates it. I’ve been lucky to have the chance to try lots of new and cool things in my career, and I’m always looking for the next one.

What challenges do you want to see RDM fix?

I want things to become frictionless. I’d like to see software that’s smart enough to understand the subtleties of where data is stored and create that connect with other software and processes throughout the researcher lifecycle. This would really help to overcome the messiness caused by having information all over the place.

What excites you most about Mendeley Data?

One valuable thing that Mendeley Data is trying to address is how to bring data together, and manage it in a consistent end-to-end way. But for me, the modular aspect of Mendeley Data is the most exciting part. You’re not locked into one solution, instead you’re able to plug in different Mendeley Data modules into your own workflows – it’s the way universities like ours want to work

What do you think the future holds for RDM?

The need for RDM is well known, but there are still a lot of people struggling with finding the most frictionless way of doing things. Bespoke software might appear to be the best solution, but often this won’t work fantastically well, as integrating new processes into existing workflows isn’t easy. RDM isn’t as simple as storing data in a repository. I’m seeing growing recognition of the need to curate data and package it up for later use, so that others can get a decent answer out of it. Most of the tools currently available don’t support this very well.

Following on from this, long-term curation and management of shared data is also a key area I’d like to see develop. What was considered a lot of data 10 years ago isn’t now, but it’s not feasible to continue buying more storage so that we can keep everything just in case. Improving metadata goes a long way towards addressing this as it enables you to make quick decisions later on, but I’d like to see new processes developed that help us to identify if we no longer require to hold certain data.

 
Find out more about Mendeley Data here.

Meet other members of the Mendeley Data advisory board here.

Meet the Mendeley Data advisory board: Rebecca Koskela

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Sharing research data has the potential to make research more reproducible and efficient. When developing Mendeley Data – an ecosystem that enables data to be stored, shared and re-used – we worked with a board of librarians and research leaders from across the research data management community.

In this series of interviews, we meet some of the members of the Mendeley Data advisory board and get their thoughts on the role of research data management (RDM), and how Mendeley Data can contribute to this.

Rebecca KoskelaName: Rebecca Koskela

Job Title: Executive Director of DataONE at University of New Mexico

Bio: Rebecca Koskela is responsible for the day-to-day operation of DataONE—coordinating all technical, management, reporting, and budget issues.

Prior to her current position, Rebecca was the Life Sciences Informatics Manager for Alaska INBRE, and the Biostatistics and Epidemiology Core Manager for the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In addition to her bioinformatics experience, Rebecca has over 25 years’ of experience in high performance computing, including positions at Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Cray Research and Intel.

What motivates you each morning?

In addition to duties at DataONE, I’m a volunteer for other projects, such as EarthCube and Research Data Alliance, which are also concerned with research data management. The collaboration with these other projects moves them all forward.

What challenges do you want to see RDM fix?

There are two main challenges that I’d like to see addressed more quickly.
It’s great that more and more funding agencies are requiring data management plans, but I think we’re lagging in the development of tools to help people do the actual planning.

I also still see problems today around data discovery and the need for adequate documentations to re-use data. In 2010, we carried out a survey at DataONE which found that researchers had limited understandings of metadata standard. Unfortunately, even with the emphasis on FAIR data, we still have a long way to go to highlight the significance of metadata.

What excites you most about Mendeley Data?

The thing that stands out to me the most about Mendeley Data is that, contrary to what people may think, Elsevier doesn’t own the data – it remains in the control of the researcher. I love that.

Mendeley Data 5 factsI also really like the fact that users can pick and choose which modules they’d like to use. This means that you can get started somewhere, and have the option to expand into other RDM tools when it suits you, instead of having to start using everything from the offset.

What value does Mendeley Data bring to the space?

Mendeley Data is all about education – it helps people learn what is meant by RDM, and then provides the tools to do it.

I also like the fact that you can manage different metadata standards with Mendeley Data. It’s a good quality product built on strong coding.

What do you think the future holds for RDM?

I hope that people will pay attention to the need for quality metadata. I’d like to see better tools being developed that will speed up change here.
I also think that education needs to play at important part in RDM – it should go hand-in-hand with tool creation. I also want to see some success stories that show how added effort can really pay off.

 

Find out more about Mendeley Data here.

Meet other members of the Mendeley Data advisory board here.