RDAP14: Developing a cross-institutional data management plan for a major particle physics project

Building a cross-institutional data management plan

or: what could possibly go wrong?

Steve Van Tuyl Data Services Librarian

Carnegie Mellon University - University Libraries svantuyl@andrew.cmu.edu

www.cmu.edu/research/data-management

GlueX Experiment:

30+ Institutions 1 National Lab 1 Spokesperson (not in charge) 15 Petabytes/year 0 Data Management Plans

AND THEN WE TOLD THEM

TO CREATE A CONSISTENT DATA MANAGEMENT PLAN THAT APPLIES TO ALL

COLLABORATORS

“What?! You’re sharing research data outside of the institution!?”

-  The Lawyers

What could possibly go wrong? In theory, the major collaborating institutions are on the hook for: •  Responsibility management •  Infrastructure management •  Intellectual property •  Data ownership •  Export controls •  Etc.

We have a hard enough time doing this WITHIN our institution…

“You could argue that the field has suffered from [a lack of data sharing]. We all could have gone back and looked at the Mark II data and found cool stuff there if that wasn’t so frickin’ impossible”

- Jefferson Lab Staff Scientist

“We’re really interested to see what you come up with because we don’t know anyone who has tried to do this before”

- Research compliance officer at CMU