Managing Research Data: Data Bytes Workshops

R Markdown provides a way of combining text, equations, and code into documents that are easy to track and maintain, while producing reliable final documents for sharing with students, editors, and colleagues. R Markdown text documents can be used by the knitr R package and tools such as LaTeX and pandoc to produce a variety of beautiful outputs, including research papers, webpages, books, and presentations. This workshop will 1) introduce why R Markdown might be a productive tool for you to adopt, 2) demonstrate the basic capabilities of .Rmd files in the creation of different documents, and 3) share additional resources to learn more about R Markdown and associated tools. 

Inconsistent formatting, cryptic file naming, and poor folder organization can add unnecessary time and labor to a project, and it can be challenging (but not impossible!) to fix these issues once a project has already started. Using descriptive names and following a standardized organizational process will make your data and materials easier to understand, share, archive, and will help to meet FAIR guidelines. These guidelines seek to improve the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of data and are being increasingly promoted and required by funding agencies, publishers, and government agencies. This workshop will provide practical suggestions for naming and organizing files and folders as well as recommend better practices to comply with FAIR data principles. 

Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Plans are an often-overlooked tool for effectively planning how and where to store, describe, and archive your research data so that it is secure and discoverable. DMS plans are becoming a required component of many federal agency grants, but they can be helpful planning tools for any research project. In this workshop we will look at the components of a DMS plan required by federal funding agencies, including the new NIH Data Management and Sharing Plan which went into effect January 25, 2023. We will also review tools such as dmptool.org to help find templates for specific agencies. Participants are encouraged to bring DMS plans that they have used or are preparing for questions or group discussion. 

The Library recently implemented a new search tool that uses EDS, or Ebsco Discovery System, to deliver results to patrons. This session will give participants the opportunity to explore the new search system, see how to use it to find resources and scholarly materials, and learn some tips and practices for getting better search results. 

Research data is a valuable resource. Careful management practices reduce mistakes, improve research reproducibility and facilitate publishing and sharing data. Better practices for different phases of the research data cycle will be discussed including planning for data collection, file management, data security, options for data storage during the project and long term storage of data for sharing after the project is complete. Planning for data management is also a critical part of developing a written data management plan, or DMP, for funding proposals. Please join us and learn these important skills in order to get your research project off to a great start. Presented by Clarke Iakovakis, Scholarly Services Librarian, and Dani Kirsch, Research Data Specialist. 

Open access data and data sets published by U.S. government agencies are available to researchers in Data.gov and Science.gov, also the data catalogs that many agencies maintain. Data can be cleaned and standardized using OpenRefine and other software packages. Learn the key access points to federal data and how to improve data usability with OpenRefine. Presented by Suzanne Reinman, Government Information and Patents Librarian, and Kevin Dyke, Maps and Spatial Data Curator. 

Open Science Framework (OSF) is a free, open source web application developed to help researchers of all disciplines (not just science) manage their workflows. OSF provides a highly customizable interface, allowing users to create modules for housing data, research materials, communication, analysis files, and more. The system has automatic, built-in version control for all files and integrates with tools researchers already use such as Dropbox, Google Drive and GitHub. It also gives you the means to add contributors with various levels of read/write permissions. This interactive workshop will take you through the process of creating an OSF project, connecting to external services, adding contributors, and will demonstrate several use cases and examples. OSF meets the NIH and NSTC’s designation as a data repository, and has recently added functionality such as the ability to link to funders and awards in order to meet funder data and materials sharing requirements. Presented by Clarke Iakovakis, Scholarly Services Librarian at the Edmon Low Library. 

LaTeX is a typesetting system for producing technical documents and is an important document standard in a number of disciplines. LaTeX gives authors more flexibility and control than other word processing software, but is less intuitive for first time users. This workshop will cover basic use of the text editor and introduce the markup language of LaTeX. Participants will gain a basic understanding of how to use LaTeX to create documents, how to write and format text, formatting equations, inserting figures, and creating a bibliography. We will use the Overleaf LaTeX text editor, which is a cloud-based LaTeX authoring software and does not require installing any software ahead of time. This workshop will also cover collaborative authoring and connecting your Overleaf project to GitHub. Presented by Clarke Iakovakis, Scholarly Services Librarian at the Edmon Low Library. 

We all value the work art and museum curators perform to preserve valuable information, items, and works so that they exist far into the future. Research data should be treated with much of the same care and meticulousness so that it can be properly archived and available to other researchers as well as the general public many years from now. As more funding agencies and journals require or encourage data sharing as a condition of funding or publication, researchers find themselves navigating metadata schemas, data documentation, and data repository selection which may all be completely new to them. This workshop will suggest some small research workflow alterations to improve the quality of your data and streamline the process from data collection to archiving. It will also cover common metadata schemas and resources, data documentation templates, and an overview of data repositories and how to go about selecting one that is appropriate for your research. 

Learn about platforms for establishing your professional identity online, including an overview of the pros and cons of various online profile tools, utilizing an ORCID iD, methods for identifying venues for disseminating your scholarly work, and the benefits of openly sharing products of your scholarship, including data, conference slides, and posters.  

One of the major functions of the patent system is the dissemination of technical information. “Patent information is a valuable and comprehensive source of technical, commercial and legal information that can be used directly for scientific and experimental purposes…” Patents are primary source documents and can supplement the traditional literature searches in your disciplines: they can be used to discover new areas of research, for ideas to improve existing research, or to see if a product has already been developed Learn about:

• Patents as intellectual property
• How to determine the classifications or technology areas that correspond to your research
• How to search patents and patent applications
• Using patents as information sources
• A comparison of patents in subject databases: Scopus, SciFinder, IEEE Explore, PubChem, Google Scholar, and JSTOR
• Using patents as information sources for research
• Presented by Clarke Iakovakis, Scholarly Services Librarian, and Suzanne Reinman, Government Information and Patents Librarian.