How Elns can galvanise research data management

How Electronic Lab Notebooks can galvanise Research Data Management

Edinburgh University

Dealing with Data Conference

Rory Macneil

Research Space

26 August 2014

What we’re going to cover

• Research data management challenges

• Universities: a three pronged response

• The emergence of the institutional ELN for

universities

• How the institutional ELN can galvanise RDM

Research data management challenges

Traditional research workflow

And the data gets discarded/lost

Publish results

Document research

Collect data

The model under threat• Why? Data moving from afterthought to centre of value as

technology drives:– Generation of more data

– Better means of recording and sharing data

• Pressure from:– Funders demanding

• Data be made public

• Data be preserved

• More efficient and accountable research

– Researchers demanding

• Easier/cheaper access to publications

• Better attribution of credit

– Universities demanding

• Cost reductions

• Access to data to satisfy demands of funders

Universities’ response

Three (un?)related initiatives

• Initial data capture with data storage facility

• Make data publicly available with data repository

• Preserve data with data archive

Archive

Storage

Repository

Who is carrying these initiatives out?

• IT

• Data librarians

• Research administrators

Who are the initiatives ‘for’?

• Funders √√√

• PIs √?

• Researchers ?

Will the initiatives be taken up???

The emergence of an institutional ELNfor universities

Three generations ofELNs

• 1990s – for Big pharma

• 2000s – for individual labs and researchers

• 2010s – for universities

2010sThe (Third generation)Revolution is coming

2011/12 Wisconsin pilot“We need an ELN that can be rolled out across the

university”It has to:

• Be easy to use• Be platform agnostic• Support intra- and inter-group collaboration• Have enterprise capabilities• Support data publishing and archiving

and . . .Still be affordable!!!!!!!!!”

Three constituencies

• Researchers– Utility and convenience of paper lab book + online capabilities – On multiple devices– File management /integration

• PIs– Controlled sharing– Collaboration– Group management– File management /integration

• IT, data librarians, research admin, commercialisation office– Enterprise features: Scalable deployment, Single Sign On– Multi-group support– IP protection– File management /integration– Archiving and repository integration

How the institutional ELNcan galvanise RDM

Conduit through the entire research process

Infrastructural glue for RDM

ELN

Storage

RepositoryArchive

Appeals to three key constituencies

• Researchers

• PIs

• IT/Research Admin