Institutional Data Management Blueprint

Date:

2009-2011

Theme:

Digital Libraries

Funding:

JISC (IDMB)

In the run-up to the 10th anniversary of the Open Archiving Initiative it is necessary to elevate research data to be a first-class citizen in the world of open scholarly communication to enable transformative inter-disciplinary research. Such a profound goal requires far more than technical capability, but encompasses significant change for all stakeholders.

The aim of the Institutional Data Management Blueprint (IDMB) project is to create a practical and attainable institutional framework for managing research data that facilitates ambitious national and international e-research practice. The objective is to produce a framework for managing research data that encompasses a whole institution (exemplified by the University of Southampton) and based on an analysis of current data management requirements for a representative group of disciplines with a range of different data.

Building on the developed policy and service-oriented computing framework, the project will scope and evaluate a pilot implementation plan for an institution-wide data model, which can be integrated into existing research workflows and extend the potential of existing data storage systems, including those linked to discipline and national shared service initiatives.

The project will build upon a decade of previous open access repository initiatives at Southampton to create a coherent set of next actions for an institutional, cross-discipline 10-year roadmap, which will be flexible in accommodating future moves to shared services, and provide a seamless transition of data management from the desktop to national/international repositories. The outcomes from this project, which will draw together technical, organisational and professional expertise from across the institution, will be widely disseminated within the sector as a form of HEI Data Management “Business Plan How-To�.

Primary investigators

• Kenji Takeda
• Les Carr
• Simon Coles
• Graham Earl
• Jeremy Frey
• Mark Brown
• Peter Hancock

Associated research group

• Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group