Incremental

The Incremental project was a collaboration between Cambridge University Library and HATII at the University of Glasgow.

The project was understanding researchers' data management concerns and needs, namely how should you create data to make sure in can be found, accessed, understood and reused in the long-term - and importantly who can help with that?

Like all the JISC RDMI projects, the initial phase had focused on gathering requirements. A 2009 HATII study had fed into our activity and helped guide a comparable study at Cambridge. Based on our joint requirements gathering activity, we set out to:

1. Produce simple, accessible, visual guidance on creating, storing, and managing data

This included producing easy-to-navigate centralised webpages at each institution, pointing researchers to existing support and new resources created by the project. We considered the format of guidance and moved towards more engaging formats such as illustrated fact sheets, flow diagrams, checklists, and FAQs.

Glasgow data management guidance webpages

Cambridge data management guidance webpages

2. Offer practical data training with discipline-specific examples and local champions

We worked with enthusiasts within departments to embed slides and resources within existing training and inductions (i.e. train the trainer). We also created brief online tutorials and/or screen-casts, and included case-studies from within disciplines wherever possible.

Data management videos

3. Connect researchers with support staff who offer one-to-one advice, guidance, and partnering

We worked with departments and the research office within each institution to make sure that researchers were referred to existing support staff for one-to-one advice during the proposal-writing stage of projects and beyond. The training courses we ran were central to this activity.

4. Work towards the development of a comprehensive data management infrastructure

This project was part of an overall effort to support data management and preservation activities at both institutions, and will be continued through the broader research data infrastructure and policy development at Cambridge and Glasgow.