We held our fourth Data Conversation here at Lancaster University bringing together researcher and their experiences of using and sharing data over pizza and cake…
Pizza is a big attraction at an event but more importantly it brings people together to share experiences and creates a relaxed and informal environment which encourages conversation – exactly what we want. Now in our fourth event in the series we have some “regulars” who come for the conversation (and the pizza) but also new faces who bring new perspectives.
We had another interesting programme with a range of researchers from different disciplines:
Our first speaker was Dr John Towse, Senior lecturer in Psychology and for this Data Conversation he reflected on his role as editor of the Journal of Numerical Cognition an open access journal which charges no author fees. The Journal is very encouraging of data sharing and as editor John is in the position of being able to ask his contributors to share their data although the journal does not require it. John stressed that you can’t expect data sharing to happen organically – you have to ask.
Our next speaker was Dr Jo Knight who has featured as part of our Data Interview series talking about her work. She explained about the emergence of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium out of a need to share genomics data even where that data can be quite sensitive. The aim is to make the data as open as possible and this has been made possible by creating a community of trust. She emphasised that they are motivated by the wish to change people’s lives and do not share the data with commercial entities.
Dr Kyungmee Lee from the Department of Educational Research works with Distance Learners supporting their doctoral training as part of the preparation for their PhD research. She encourages students to reuse existing datasets to investigate research methods and it was whilst doing this she realised how many datasets were out there which were difficult to use because they lacked context.
Dr Dermot Lynott entertained us with his confessions of a poor data manager, as he like the rest of us has been guilty of poor file organisation and even worse file naming. However he also gave us a success story of publishing data which has been shared and re-used for a period of over 10 years and was keen to encourage others to see the benefit of doing the same.
Finally Professor Maggie Mort wrapped up with a moving and powerful description of the data gathered as part of the Documenting Flood Experience project and with warnings about the difficulties which might lie ahead with the incoming GDPR regulations which will impact on future projects which gather, use and store data relating to children. This sparked off even more interest and debate.
To be honest we could easily have been there all day and we’re very much looking forward to the next Data Conversation on 10th April – Stories from the Field.
Rachel MacGregor, Digital Archivist
