Shows
IDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy024 - FAIR Instruments and Facilities Research Coordination Network - Mayernik, Johnson, and MundomaIn this episode, we’re diving into a topic that’s gaining momentum across the research data community—assigning persistent identifiers, or PIDs, to instruments and facilities. As the research ecosystem continues to push toward greater transparency, reproducibility, and FAIR practices, recognizing the role of the tools and spaces where research happens has become increasingly important. But assigning PIDs to instruments and facilities isn’t just about metadata—it’s about creating connections across systems, surfacing valuable research infrastructure, and ensuring proper attribution. Today, we’re speaking with three representatives from the NSF-funded FAIR Instruments and Facilities Research Coord...2025-04-1133 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy023 - Article Review: FAIR GPT: A virtual consultant for research data management in ChatGPTIn this episode, Briana and Shannon discuss an article that shares a novel development in the research data management engagement and support space - an AI virtual consultant designed by researchers at the University of Mannheim to address the persistent challenges researchers face in implementing FAIR data principles. This represents a groundbreaking approach to simplifying complex data management processes through AI-driven assistance.Article citation: Shigapov, Renat, and Irene Schumm. "FAIR GPT: A virtual consultant for research data management in ChatGPT." arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.07108 (2024).2025-02-2633 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy022 - Data Hunters Card Game and Nexum data4art - Soro and StrubbiaData professionals often ask themselves: how can we make research data literacy and data management training more engaging, interactive, and fun?
In this episode, we explore two highly innovative and creative approaches designed to enhance understanding and transform how researchers interact with key concepts in research data and data management.
Alessandra Soro (she/her) is a Community Manager working at 4TU.ResearchData: the community for research data and software professionals at the four technical universities in The Netherlands. Over the past few years, Alessandra has been involved in the development of various communities, such as t...2025-01-1632 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy021 - Article Review: Ten simple rules for recognizing data and software contributions in hiring, promotion, and tenureIn open science, universities are key to fostering adoption of best practices and can encourage these best practices through academic evaluation processes. Promotion and tenure committees are one of these processes. Committees often have the capability to evaluate articles and books, but assessing data and software is a recent development for which there are few guidelines.
In this episode, Shannon and Briana go through ten proposed simple rules for recognizing data and software contributions.
Article citation:
Puebla I, Ascoli GA, Blume J, Chodacki J, Finnell J, Kennedy DN, et al. (2024) Ten simple ru...2024-12-3130 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy020 - The Research Data Management Workbook - BrineyTo kick off the season, we're excited to highlight a new resource designed to help researchers strengthen their data management practices. We're speaking with Kristin Briney, the creator of the Research Data Management Workbook—a practical tool packed with hands-on exercises that guide researchers through key phases of the data lifecycle.
We’ll explore the workbook's unique exercises and how researchers can use them to build their research skills as well as how data stewards can use the exercises to more efficiently and effectively support researchers. Also included is our sidebar on the upcoming accessibility requirements for data...2024-10-2923 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy019 - Season 2 Finale: Compilation EpisodeAs season 2 of IDEA comes to a close, join us in hearing one last time from our interviewees as we ask all of them a new set of research data management themed questions.
How do you measure the success of a researcher engagement activity?
What do you think the next big trend in research data management is?
What is your favorite form of researcher engagement and why?
An episode a year in the making!
A big thank you to our guests this season: James Edson, Jeffrey Glatstein, Craig Risien, Erin Barker, Michael Hofmockel, Thomas Serrano, M...2024-08-1416 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy018 - Collections as Data: A Data Literacy Tool for Community Engagement - OrlowskaThe Collections as Data initiative aims to expand the uses of archival data collections by making them more accessible, particularly in forms ready for computationally driven research and teaching. This initiative makes the data from these collections available so that researchers and the public can engage with them.
In this episode, we have the pleasure of speaking with Daria Orlowska, Data Librarian at Western Michigan University, about her collections as data work where she not only worked with others to develop structured datasets from historical records, but also leveraged this collection to create data literacy curriculum.
2024-07-0130 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy017 - Article Review: Making Research Data Publicly Accessible: Estimates of Institutional & Researcher ExpensesIn this episode, Shannon and Briana delve into the recently published NSF funded Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative's report titled, "Making Research Data Publicly Accessible: Estimates of Institutional & Researcher Expenses." The report provides a retrospective analysis of the costs incurred by six academic institutions in making research data publicly accessible and offers recommendations and considerations for researchers, institutions, and funding agencies.
Report citation:
Hoeflich Mohr, Alicia, Jake Carlson, Lizhao Ge, Joel Herndon, Wendy Kozlowski, Jennifer Moore, Jonathan Petters, S...2024-04-3030 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy016 - Data Management Training at the University of Vienna - Bargmann, Feichtinger, and KateIn today’s episode, we have the pleasure of speaking with data stewards from the University of Vienna, who’ve created a training program with courses catering to PhD students, technical staff, and specific disciplines. The training covers general data management and specific topics such as support for particular infrastructure. And not only are they offering this training to their community, but they have taken active steps to assess the effectiveness of their training program.
Monika Bargmann is the Data Stewardess for the Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. Bringing people and i...2024-03-2025 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy015 - Article Review: Tiered Model for Data Management in Grant ProposalsShannon and Briana discuss the article: A Tiered Model for Data Management, Curation, and Sharing Support in Grant Proposals and Budgets in the Journal of eScience Librarianship. This case study discusses differing levels of support for researchers during projects, challenges arising from the tiered support model, and monitoring metrics from those using the services.
Article citation:
Johnson, A., (2023) “A Tiered Model for Data Management, Curation, and Sharing Support in Grant Proposals and Budgets”, Journal of eScience Librarianship 12(2), e702. doi: https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.702
2024-02-2026 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy014 - The Advance Team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - Barker, Hofmockel, and SerranoThere are many examples of embedded data curators that different institutions use to support their researchers' data management practices. But no two programs seem to work in the same way, or exist in the same setting. In this episode, we’re going to hear about an embedded data management and curation support service in the context of a US national lab, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The Advance Team is a group of librarians, curators, and engineers who work with various projects across the lab to support good data management practices.
Dr. Erin Iesulauro Barker is a senior research scientist at...2024-01-1929 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy013 - Article Review: Effects of RDM ServicesShannon and Briana discuss the article "The Effects of Research Data Management Services: Associating the Data Curation Lifecycle with Open Research Output" published in ACRL. They discuss how institutional contexts can influence a researcher's ability and desire to produce open data products, the impact of investing in RDM services and resources, and whether the data curation lifecycle impacts a researcher sharing their data.
Article citation:
Pares, N., & Organisciak, P. (2023). The Effects of Research Data Management Services: Associating the Data Curation Lifecycle with Open Research Output. College & Research Libraries, 84(5), 751. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.84.5.7512023-12-1324 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy012 - Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) - Edson, Glatstein, and RisienResearch increasingly requires working with both large amounts of data as well as diverse types of data. Additionally, data reuse is being encouraged as a means to build on previous research and to enable answering larger and more complex problems through combining data sources. So, how can data producers make their data more openly available and reusable? And how can generating data and providing open access to it be an engagement opportunity?
The Ocean Observatories (OOI) is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. 1743430 to gather, distribute...2023-10-2530 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy011 - Season 1 Finale: Compilation EpisodeFor the season finale, we're doing something a little different. As we've interviewed our guests over the course of the year, we've been asking each group same set of four questions, all related to research data management. What makes something an engagement opportunity? How do you define a dataset? What one piece of information do you wish all researchers knew about RDM? And what’s the best data success you’ve ever seen? Now, we bring you the answers.
A big thank you to our guests this season: Julie Goldman, Sarah Hauserman, Karl Benedict, Jon Wheeler, Anna Sack...2023-05-1824 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy010 - Article Review: There’s no “I” in Research Data ManagementWith the increased focus on research reproducibility and transparency, new policies, practices, and principles have been established for research data management. As this area has and continues to rapidly change, we have also seen the development of research data management services to support researchers in adopting or adapting practices to meet these new expectations. But what form have these service models taken and what works and what doesn’t?
Many RDM support service models initiated in Libraries, but have discovered that to fully support researchers a multi-stakeholder service model is necessary because research practice and researchers’ questions requ...2023-04-1326 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy009 - The Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative - Vitale, Taylor, Carlson, and PettersA lot of engagement work with researchers centers around supporting their efforts to make the data underlying their research publicly available. It’s a critical step to advancing science and increasingly a requirement from different funders and publishers. Institutions have responded by developing and offering a variety of services to support their researchers. So how well are these services working? And how much are they costing?
The Realities of Academic Data Sharing, or RADS, Initiative is investigating these questions. Their project, supported by an NSF EAGER grant, is looking at three research questions: Where are funded researchers ac...2023-03-1735 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy008 - Article Review: Current Models of Data StewardshipHow an institution models their research data support services can substantially impact engagement with researchers, including the frequency, duration, or opportunity. In this episode, Shannon and Briana discuss a recent report from the Research Data Alliance Professionalising Data Stewardship Interest Group. They provide a brief synopsis of the nearly 50-page report and highlight some of the most interesting take-aways, with a focus on what survey questions can play into a data professionals engagement plan at their own institution.
Article citation: Ayres, B., Lehtsalu, L., Parton, G., Ádám Száldobágyi, Warren, E., Whyte, A., & Zimmer, N. (2022).RDA...2023-03-0126 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy007 - Software Horror Escape Room - Karvovskaya, Rudmann, van de Sandt, & VermaasResearchers are increasingly needing to know about software management, quality, accessibility, and sustainability in support of Open Science efforts and research reproducibility. However, standard practices or principles are not always applied to software and how researchers learn to manage software is often not formalized. In this episode, we will be learning how the Software Horror Escape Room was created and how this game has successfully engaged researchers with the concepts of software management.
Lena Karvovskaya (@LangData) is Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam's RDM and Open Science community manager. Her goal is to create an environment where researchers and support...2023-01-1929 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy006 - Article Review: Data Management Plans in ActionShannon and Briana discuss the article “Data Management Planning for an Eight-Institution, Multi-Year Research Project” published in the International Journal of Digital Curation. They provide a brief rundown of how researchers in this case study leveraged data management plans to support coordination of a complex, multi-institution, and multi-year research project, provide insight into how the provided example data management plans can be used as demonstration and engagement tools with researchers, and discuss distinctions between data management plan policy requirements and the reality of research practice as well as what it means when you have a data management plan that actu...2022-11-2922 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy005 - A Targeted Approach to Outreach and Instruction at UC Berkeley - Sackmann, Smith, & NeeserWith the rise in data intensive research and institutional, funder, and publishing requirements for data management and sharing, there is a lot of opportunity for education and engagement around how to best address data management during the research process. Researchers are increasingly needing support with how to properly manage their research outputs and develop workflows that support research reproducibility and open science. One common engagement avenue for librarians is education in the form of instruction, consultation, or outreach services.
Our guests today have worked at their institution to tailor this type of support for their researchers. They w...2022-10-1232 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy004 - Article Review: Running a Reproducibility ChallengeShannon and Briana discuss the article “Promoting and Enabling Reproducible Data Science Through a Reproducibility Challenge” published in the Harvard Data Science Review. They provide a brief rundown of how the authors ran their reproducibility challenge, what lessons they learned from the challenge participants, and their arguments for why universities—their data science centers and research support units—have a critical role to play in promoting “actionable reproducibility."
Article Citation: Liu, J., Carlson, J., Pasek, J., Puchala, B., Rao, A., & Jagadish, H. V. (2022). Promoting and Enabling Reproducible Data Science Through a Reproducibility Challenge. Harvard Data Science Review, 4(3). https://doi...2022-09-1723 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy003 - Short-Form and Long-Form Carpentries Workshops - Benedict & WheelerAs research changes; becoming more data and computationally intensive, it is necessary for researchers to possess strong data management, data information literacy and data science skills. Research Data Service units in University Libraries themselves and in collaboration with disciplinary experts are well suited to offer training that bridges the gap between theoretical knowledge and application-specific or programming skills offering researchers the knowledge and how to to engage in this data and computationally intensive research environment. In this episode, Karl Benedict, a Professor, the Director of the Research Data Services and Information Technology Services programs, and a subject area expert...2022-08-1820 min
IDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy002 - Article Review: Articles as Researcher Engagement ToolsShannon and Briana discuss the article “Ten simple rules for improving research data discovery” published in PLoS Computational Biology. They provide a brief rundown of what those rules are, what they thought about them, and how this paper serves a dual purpose–great ideas for opportunities to engage with researchers AND acting as an engagement opportunity itself.
Article citation: Contaxis N, Clark J, Dellureficio A, Gonzales S, Mannheimer S, Oxley PR, et al. (2022) Ten simple rules for improving research data discovery. PLoS Comput Biol 18(2): e1009768. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.10097682022-07-1121 minIDEA: Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy001 - Researcher Onboarding and Offboarding Data Management Checklists at Harvard University - Goldman & HausermanA major challenge for researchers in the University setting, is a lack of standardized workflows for research data and a major challenge as data professionals supporting researchers with their research data needs is engaging with researchers at the right time. In this episode, we will be learning more about how Sarah Hauserman, Research Data Manager with Harvard Medical School, Research Computing, and Julie Goldman, the Countway Research Data Services Librarian with the Harvard Library, coordinated a partnership between data professionals in the library, research labs, and information technology departments to enhance institutional data services including creating resources and connecting...2022-06-1025 min
IDEA: Improving Data Engagement and AdvocacyTrailerIntroducing IDEA, the podcast about Improving Data Engagement and Advocacy. Hosted by Briana Wham and Shannon Sheridan. In our episodes, we’ll be bringing you interviews from real world data professionals who are engaging their researchers in new and novel ways. We’ll also be reviewing the literature and keeping you up to date on what’s getting published that’s worth a read. Or, in your case, a listen. We hope you’ll join us as we talk with our colleagues and see what’s working…or what’s not in the wider world of research data management. Our theme music...2022-05-1102 min