As part of the University’s commitment to supporting research excellence, and in particular to help researchers maximise the impact of their research and to comply with funder policies, the University Library (Research Data & Information Services) is developing a research data repository.
Many funders, including the Research Councils, Wellcome Trust and some European H2020 programmes already require data to be preserved and shared long-term after the end of the project. A summary of funder requirements can be found at http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/overview-funders-data-policies
The University is in the latter stages of developing a Research Data Policy, which will encourage all researchers to include research data management as an integral part of the research process.
The provision of the research data repository is a key element in supporting the implementation of this policy, and is particularly relevant to data sets that don’t have a natural home elsewhere in a subject or (inter)national data centre or repository. We are happy to consider data sets that can be made openly available as well as data sets which have conditions restricting access.
We are looking for volunteers now to take part in the pilot and help us develop the repository to meet researchers’ needs. If you are interested in participating, please complete our questionnaire available at https://surveys.st-andrews.ac.uk/rdrpilot.
We are still finalising the amount of data we can consider for the pilot, and would encourage everyone to take part in the survey to help us plan how much long-term storage we need. The pilot will begin later this year.
If you have any questions, please email research-data@st-andrews.ac.uk; or contact Anna Clements on ext. 2761 or Scott Brander on ext. 2794.
