ANDS Projects: The University of Western Australia 16 May, 2011 Toby Burrows, Manager (eResearch Support)

Research at UWA  $160 million in annual research income  At least 1,400 research staff (FTE)  Over 2,000 HDR students enrolled and 300 completions annually  Over 2,000 research publications annually (in four main DEEWR categories)  Jiao Tong rankings (2010): 112 th overall, 34 th in life and agricultural sciences, th in clinical medicine 2010 highlights  $24.25 million for a new ARC Centre of Excellence (History of Emotions)  $11.4 million for ARC Linkage Projects  $4.4 million for ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities grants  $2.8 million for ten ARC “Super Science” fellowships  $9 million for three NHMRC Centres of Clinical Excellence

UWA ANDS projects  Data Capture + Seeding the Commons projects  Managed by UWA Information Services (Library + IT)  UWA Project Board established  User Advisory Group(s) to be established  Staff: project manager, analyst, programmer (+ more to come)  Started July 2010 – completion due December 2011 Main Goals  Build a registry of research data at UWA  Implement software tools for improving the management of research data in three key research areas  Educate research staff and students in research data management  Develop an informed policy framework for research data management

Data Capture project I Metadata store  Capture information about research data collections  Contribute metadata in RIF-CS format to Research Data Australia Software – VIVO  Research profiling software  Developed at Cornell University – open source (+ Collexis commercial version)  Major U.S. project led by University of Florida (medical research)  Other Australian ANDS-VIVO sites: Griffith, QUT, Melbourne, Curtin Melbourne University: University of Florida: Cornell University: Collexis at Michigan:

Data Capture projects II - IV Goal  Implement data capture tools and systems for three strategic research areas Subject areas  Rock art: Centre for Rock-Art Studies:  Marine ecology: Oceans Institute:  Characterization and analysis for bio-imaging: Centre for Microscopy, Characterization and Analysis (CMCA): Issues  Access to and ownership of indigenous data  Large-scale video files  Linking Instruments Datasets Publications

Seeding the Commons project Objectives Develop and implement a framework for storage of metadata about research data collections at UWA  Identify at least 50 strategically important research data collections at UWA  Ensure that RIF-CS metadata about these collections are made available to Research Data Australia Educate research staff and students in informed research data management Develop an informed policy framework for institutional research data management Benefits  Identification of at least 50 strategically important research data collections  Creation of stored and managed information about research data sets using RIF-CS  Discovery and re-use of research data collections by outside researchers via Research Data Australia  Increased visibility of UWA research data sets to outside researchers  Discovery and re-use of UWA research data collections by outside researchers  Institutional guidelines for research data management  Increased understanding of data management practices across the university  Improved support for researchers and research students around management of research data

Some Issues Arising (so far)  Acquiring and retaining expertise in implementing and supporting Open Source software for core business systems  Proliferation of research-related information within UWA – how to identify the best or most authoritative source?  Persistent identifiers for researchers and datasets – how to manage these locally?  How to address data storage issues? They are an integral part of integrated and automated data capture processes, but are generally outside the scope of ANDS funding.  Sustainability: how to support the services developed during the ANDS projects after the ANDS funding finishes? A new eResearch and Digital Developments Unit will be part of the answer.