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.

Call them what you like - unmanned air vehicles, uncrewed aircraft systems, or drones - autonomous aircraft open up new possibilities for gathering data, both through remote sensing and in-situ observations. This workshop will outline rules of the road for using drones, including both campus policies and federal regulations, as well as providing details of campus resources for building, modifying, and flying drones for research or other uses. Beginning with various applications, we will provide basic guidelines for operating safely and legally, then end with resources for students and faculty. 

Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Plans are an often-overlooked tool for effectively planning how and where to store, describe, and share your research data so that it is secure and discoverable. DMS plans are 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 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 Search is easy to use but incredibly powerful, and this session will help you get the most out of the tools available to you. It will cover basics such as using the search box, using limiters to refine your searches, and using the Advanced Search screen to drill down to find exactly what you need. The session will also go in-depth with the Folder tool to help you organize your research, and use Publication Finder to locate specific books and journals. 

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. 

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. 

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. Data management and sharing are also one part of a broader movement toward more open research practices. Please join us and learn these important skills in order to get your research project off to a great start. 

Open access data and data sets published by U.S. government agencies are available to researchers in Data.gov and Science.gov, as well as 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.

Individuals interested in this session may also be interested in attending a hands-on session later this semester that provides an introduction to Tidy Data and OpenRefine - keep an eye on the Library Calendar or the OSU Carpentries page for a registration link! 

Description coming soon! 

This workshop will explore the use of the R package ggplot2 to create effective, professional data visualizations. Participants will explore various data visualizations and aesthetic modifications to graphs through some hands-on exercises. This will expand on the ggplot2 lesson from the R Carpentries workshop series. Attendees are expected to have some prior experience coding in R (e.g., creating objects, importing data, writing and executing basic functions) but do not need prior experience with the ggplot2 package itself. 

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. 

This presentation will explore how to use Power BI to create impactful and professional data visualizations. Participants will learn techniques for transforming data into compelling stories and gain practical insights through hands-on examples. No prior experience with Power BI is needed, making this session perfect for beginners or those looking to expand their data visualization skills. Ideal for students and campus partners, this presentation is a great opportunity to enhance your storytelling with data! 

TWe 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. 

During this session, we will look at how to develop content for Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) as well as how we can use some of these tools for academic research focusing on projects that the Mixed Reality Lab at Oklahoma State University is working on.