Home > The value of digital curation > Digital Curation FAQ > Frequently Asked Questions: How can the DCC help you?

Frequently Asked Questions: How can the DCC help you?

  1. How can the DCC help researchers and Principal Investigators (PIs)?
  2. How can the DCC help data managers and research support staff?
  3. How can the DCC help data librarians and IT service managers?
  4. How can the DCC help data scientists?
  5. How can the DCC help senior research managers?
  6. How can the DCC help funding bodies, national data centres, learned societies and professional bodies?
  7. How can the DCC help consultants?
  8. How can the DCC help Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)?

Q1. How can the DCC help researchers and Principal Investigators (PIs)?

Funding bodies and institutions now expect all researchers, and especially Principal Investigators (PIs), to take a more active role in curation. DCC helps you understand what digital curation means, as well as 'Who does what' - the roles involved in curation. We can direct you to the data policies relevant to you, and guide you through a Data Management Plan for your project.

Whether or not your role already focuses on data management, DCC Curation Briefings and How-to Guides will add to your understanding of the Curation Lifecycle, and what you can gain from safeguarding your research assets for future reuse.

We also help you find training courses to build your skills, offer our own Curation 101 introductory courses, as well as DCC Roadshow events to help you connect with others in your area doing digital research or supporting it.

Practical curation involves dealing with data risks, and identifying opportunities to benefit from their better management. This is tackled in the Data Asset Framework. Our Projects pages and Catalogue of Tools will help you find and assess tools that can help you exploit data further, or recommend resources to others. You can also catch up with new resources and developments in our News and Blog pages.

Researchers are increasingly seeing an impact from sharing research more openly, and face increased demand for open access to research material. Our open science case studies profile experiences in various fields.

Your institution may offer detailed support for your data management needs. To help you get started we can point you to examples from UK institutions on data storage, backup and security. You can also benefit from our guide on how to licence research data, plus briefings on Freedom of Information (FOI) and other legal aspects of curation.

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Q2. How can the DCC help data managers and research support staff?

DCC can help your research group or department get more impact from its research assets by developing your knowledge and skills. We help you find courses and offer several levels of training. DCC Roadshow events will help you connect with others involved locally. You can also learn from others’ views and experiences through our Research Data Management Forum events, connect online through our Blog and News pages, or the JISC Research Data Management list, and pick up expertise through the DCC Associates list. For in-depth treatment of new developments we offer the International Journal of Digital Curation and the International Digital Curation Conference.

We can help you keep track of the data policy requirements your researchers may ask about. Our Data Management Planning checklist and online toolkit can take you through the DMP required for a research proposal. We also help you implement a plan for managing the data assets accumulated from existing projects, through the Data Asset Framework. You can also benefit from introductory level briefings, or the more practical introductions in our How-to Guides. Detailed tools and methods, e.g. for assessing your datasets and managing data risks are available, and the DCC Curation Reference Manual offers more in-depth coverage of specific data types and topics including how to manage data risks.

We offer an overview of how curation roles fit together; for example longer-term preservation may be the remit of your institution’s repository or a subject-based data centre but local data management is a vital for central repositories to work economically. The Curation Lifecycle offers a high-level overview, while How-to Guides describe concrete activities such as Data Appraisal & Selection. These include tackling data documentation and metadata early in the research process, and we provide Briefings on metadata standards and Curation Reference Manual chapters on metadata and related topics.

Maximising impact from research nowadays is partly about sharing all research assets more openly. Balancing that against IPR and other concerns requires guidance on how to licence data, and we profile data sharing experiences in various fields in the open science case studies . We also provide briefings on Freedom of Information (FOI) and other legal aspects of curation.

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Q3. How can the DCC help data librarians and IT service managers?

Responsible for implementing data policies, guidelines or infrastructure for a repository or data centre service, whether for your institution, a broader collaboration or subject-based data centre, we can help you track data policies, and communicate the big picture of how curation roles fit together.

If your own role involves working with Senior Research Managers to develop your institution’s policy, we can help with a policy framework developed in the ERIS project, and point you to resources to help in planning data management and preservation.

DCC synthesises and filters specialist advice on managing research data services. We provide awareness-level short Briefings and working knowledge in the form of How-to Guides. More advanced methods to ensure data is accessible and reusable are covered in chapters of the Curation Reference Manual. These should help to identify your requirements; we help you find data management and preservation tools relevant to these needs through our catalogue of tools and resources, an evolving community resource.

To help you track this rapidly evolving service area we regularly provide events to share views and experiences ranging from DCC Roadshows to the Research Data Management Forum, and annual International Digital Curation Conference. Online, we provide News and Blogs and host the JISC Research Data Management list. The DCC Associates list and case studies will also help you gain from experiences of others.

The DCC Curation Lifecycle Model is the leading framework for planning and managing curation and for our Data Management Planning tool. This helps researchers and data managers comply with funding body guidelines at the proposal stage. It can similarly inform your outreach work and staff development along with our Briefings and How-to Guides. The Curation 101 course is our starter for those new to curation. We can also help you tailor it to your own institution’s needs with Train the Trainer courses.

Maximising impact from research is partly about sharing all research assets more openly. Balancing that against IPR and other concerns requires guidance on how to licence data, and we profile data sharing experiences in various fields in the open science case studies. We also provide briefings on Freedom of Information (FOI) and other legal aspects of curation.

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Q4. How can the DCC help data scientists?

Whether your research interest is in developing technologies, standards and services to support digital research, or in understanding the social shaping of data infrastructures; DCC can help you monitor the emerging key issues and trends by synthesising recent projects and reports. The Curation Reference Manual is a peer-reviewed outlet providing you with state-of-the-art reports on key curation themes.

We can help you find and publish research in curation and related fields through the International Journal of Digital Curation. We regularly report on new research outputs in our Blog and News, while our publications page lists recent DCC outputs and presentations. The Tools Catalogue is a community-maintained information source including, for example, standards for data description and documentation, also the subject of Standards Watch papers.

DCC Case Studies and Interviews relate community experiences of dealing with curation, from small-scale scholarship to data-intensive and inter-disciplinary science. Case studies often deal with ethical, legal and social aspects of research data curation. We also summarise current legal guidelines in Briefings and can direct you to appropriate resources, including JISC Guidelines on the applicability of Freedom of Information to research data.

We also host events and provide forums ranging from the Research Data Management Forum, annual International Digital Curation Conference to the DCC Associates list.

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Q5. How can the DCC help senior research managers?

We can help you track the emerging significance of data curation to shape your HEI’s policies and codes of practice for research, to engage your research communities and other stakeholders, and to help coordinate professional development and research assessments. DCC points you to relevant information on UK data policies to help you formulate guidelines for research integrity and responsible conduct in your institution. We condense funding body data policies and provide an overview of the curation roles and lifecycle of curation activities required to sustain compliance with these.

Faced with downward pressure on funding, it is more important than ever to safeguard research assets including the ‘intellectual capital’ in data. Ultimately the development of research data services and infrastructure is about safeguarding this. DCC Roadshow events can help you identify synergies between developments in your own locale, in national JISC programmes and elsewhere. The ERIS project exemplifies a cross-institutional policy framework for data repositories in the context of a Scottish research pool.

To help you coordinate skills development in research data management we provide starter courses that can be tailored to your institution’s needs for career development or postgraduate training.

Maximising impact from research nowadays is partly about sharing all research assets more openly. Balancing that against IPR and other concerns requires guidance on how to licence data. We profile data sharing experiences in various fields in the open science case studies and also provide briefings on Freedom of Information (FOI) and other legal aspects of curation.

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Q6. How can the DCC help funding bodies, national data centres, learned societies and professional bodies?

Responsible for developing policy guidelines and standards for UK research infrastructure, DCC helps you fulfil your outreach objectives by delivering your message to a national and international audience. We work across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, reaching the communities engaged with digital research issues and supporting their needs for advice. Our Data Management Planning tool, for example, helps researchers and data managers work with the relevant funding body guidelines at the proposal stage… and beyond that to safeguard the investment in research assets throughout the research lifecycle.

DCC is active in formulating curricula for data management training. We are involved in the Working Group on Information-Handling, coordinated by RIN, established to promote a more strategic national approach to HE researchers’ training. We work with institutions to ‘train the trainer’, enabling them to tailor introductory courses for their postgraduate education and professional development needs.

We also work with funders and other national organisations to channel advice on relevant standards and infrastructure developments. We regularly report on new developments in our News and Blogs pages, and have a focus on policy and legal aspects. Tools Catalogue is a community-maintained information source including, for example, standards for data description and documentation, also the subject of Standards Watch papers.

DCC will help you track emerging trends through regular events including the Research Data Management Forum workshops, and touring DCC Roadshow events, involving regional stakeholders from policy, research and data backgrounds. Our conference (International Digital Curation Conference) also involves the research policy community as well as data specialists. Online, we host discussion through the DCC Associates Network email list.

We can work collaboratively with you to produce awareness-level short Briefings, ‘working knowledge’ level How-to Guides and more in-depth Curation Reference Manual chapters. Many deal with legal, ethical and social aspects of research data management, or at least touch on them. As our case studies have found, issues affecting research communities such as peer review and public engagement are as important to data management as the technical aspects.

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Q7. How can the DCC help consultants?

If your business is to provide resources to the higher education community for managing and adding value to research data, DCC can help put them to the test of wider opinion. We provide a Tools Catalogue that the curation community uses to access and review everything from policy guides to preservation tools. DCC also helps you track emerging trends through our conference (International Digital Curation Conference) and other events and publications.

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Q8. How can the DCC help Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)?

The DCC has been funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), through its Universities Modernisation Fund (UMF), to provide intensive, tailored support to increase research data management capability among Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

We will work closely with 18 HEIs between Summer 2011 and Spring 2013, providing a range of support and services. Each engagement will be tailored to the specific needs and priorities of the institution...Read more

 

 

The DCC is funded by

Joint Information Systems Committee