Data Management Training/meeting notes 20160204

Agenda:

• Report on Proposal submitted to USGS Community for Data Integration (CDI) Program for a DMT Clearinghouse (See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w3hXUJSDNJ5YBIay1uiH2_fPNFq9kjGmlCD51ove7Ug/edit?usp=sharing )

• Anything we can do in the meantime?

• Other ideas for activities (from July mtg notes last year):

• Inventory of topics compared to ESIP’s original outline (Sophie’s Funding Friday work).
• Evaluation of topics informed by Sophie’s comparison.
• Evaluation of existing modules including:

• Running some analytics (including Google Analytics) against the ESIP Commons website and possibly the Vimeo website for the modules to see how much they have been used, and other information that we could ascertain; would need to figure out how what could be discovered from Google Analytics and add to Drupal listings, probably. Talk to ESIP Drupal content manager about this?

• Market / offer existing DM Short Course modules.
• Call for authors for new modules and for updates to selected existing modules.
• Evaluate current DM Short Course template and peer review process
• Connect with ESIP Education Committee

• Reports from other organizations / working groups: (DataONE, RDA, etc.)
• Anything else?

Attending:

• Shawn Smith, Amber Budden, Justin Goldstein, Matt Mayernik, Ruth Duerr, Tamar Norkin, April Clyburne-Sherin, Sophie Hou (briefly), Nancy Hoebelheinrich

Notes:

• Nancy gave an update about the proposal submitted to the USGS Community for Data Integration for a Data Management Training Clearinghouse.
• RDA related activities:
  • Ruth noted that a US Research Data Alliance (RDA) Working Group is starting to engage in a similar process and it would make sense to work together on the efforts.
    • The US RDA WG is in the process of determining what metadata should be gathered for the resources that they collect; at this point there are characteristics that they want to gather which are not presently included in the Schema.org's LRMI metadata schema such as whether fees are charged for the resources.
    • At this point, the resources are being collected in a spreadsheet, so this group might find it useful to include the resources they find in our Drupal, web-based Clearinghouse once we've got it set up.
    • Ruth will convey information back and forth to our group and this group on our efforts and suggest when working together more directly might be appropriate.
    • Amber also noted that DataONE's Rebecca Koskela is also on the RDA Metadata Working Group, and so might know more about any activities there or with this other group; she will talk with Rebecca about them.
• DataONE related activities:
  • Amber noted that DataONE is about to release information about approaches to provenance of data, a topic they've been working on for quite a while, as well as defining metrics for the infrastructure of a data repository, such as uploads and downloads of data
• NCEAS related activities:
  • Amber noted that this group had been focusing on gathering information about training events rather than training resources, but has more recently been focused upon finishing a White Paper on other topics. She will be speaking with Matt Jones in the next week or so and will find out more about what this group is doing and how we might work with them to collect information about training events as we had anticipated including events within the scope of our Clearinghouse as well.
• Other areas to begin work on:
  • There was a good discussion about what the target audience(s) should be for any new training resources that we create similar to the ESIP Data Management for Scientists Short Course.
  • Many of the existing learning resources that we know about are targeted to the Research scientist which is helpful, but does not necessarily recognize that most researchers are far more interested in doing their research rather than managing their research data. The ESIP Short Course was focused upon self-education for research scientists as were the DataONE resources.
  • Shawn Smith from Florida State asked what opinions were regarding the need for more definition of a curriculum for dedicated data research managers who might be working for an academic or agency data center. He described a process in which he had been engaged that defined a knowledge and skill set guide for a Marine Technician used by teachers and instructors as a curriculum guide.
  • Ruth noted that there are lots of approaches to this question, ranging from organizations that have been looking at research data management (via the CODATA Data Science Journal, for instance, that has been in existence for 30 years) to now those in the CS area who are starting to use the term "data analytics". Most of those who have been working on data management have been employed by federal agencies such as NOAA, NASA, USGS and others. Now there seem to be more opportunities in academic environments as well.

** Both Shawn and Matt Mayernik noted that they were definitely seeing the need for a professional role for data managers who can serve as intermediaries between research data producers and data repository managers. This is an important perspective to bring to our evaluation of topics for any new modules.

• • April Clyburne-Sherin from the Center for Open Science described her organization's focus upon providing activities, services and educational resources that promote reproducibility such as the Open Science Framework, Statistical Methodologies and other topics in 3 hour workshops, etc. Given what others are doing, she sees the value in working together, especially in areas related to workflow and sharing of data. She would be happy to use part of a future session to describe what her organization is doing.
  • Both Nancy and Matt noted that it would make sense to take on the evaluation of topics that need to be covered in new learning resources, starting with the work that Sophie has done, and to do that with different target audiences in mind. The next meeting we will ask Sophie to share the matrix of topics that she created from her Funding Friday project, and then figure out how to augment that for different target audiences.

*Topics for future discussion:

• For March, evaluation of topics needing to be covered in new or adapted resources / curricula starting with Sophie's topic matrix
• Approach and opportunities for collaboration with the Center for Open Science
• Planning how to evaluate which of the ESIP Short Course modules need to be updated or deleted
• Fingers crossed, planning for the implementation of a Data Management Training Clearinghouse