Sample ESRC Data Management Plan

Sample ESRC Data
Management Plan
Author
University of Bristol Research Data Service
Date
4 April 2014
Version
2
Notes
URI
data.bris.ac.uk
IPR
Copyright © 2014 University of Bristol
University of Bristol
04.04.2014 | version 2
Introduction
The following is intended as an illustration of an ESRC Data Management Plan. It is drawn from a real
world ESRC proposal prepared by the University of Bristol Law School. The plan is made public with
the kind permission of the applicant, Dr Margherita Pieraccini.
Further costing and ethical issues relating to the proposal were covered in the wider ‘Case for
Support’. This document is not available; however the following statement from the Case for
Support explains the nature of the planned digital outputs and how they relate to the wider research
questions:
“Bringing forth the different values of nature will be done primarily through a series of workshops in
three different case studies areas where biodiversity offsetting has been considered. The casestudies - deploying workshops as fora for experiential learning, environmental democratisation and
reflexivity - will attempt to bring together the various actors involved and/or affected in the planning
processes. All the workshops will be sites not just for the collection but for the co-creation/coproduction of knowledge, seeking to locate, using different means, diverse perceptions of nature
and values and exploring ways in which these can be integrated to produce a more legitimate
biodiversity offsetting strategy. By hosting many of these co-production elements of the research at
the sites of the development, values will not only be articulated by people’s conceptualisation of the
issues but also by the places themselves, making biodiversity itself integral to the co-production of
new biodiversity offsetting strategies, in line with a ‘more-than-human’ approach. The workshops
will be supplemented by semi-structured interviews and by extensive documentary analysis.”
Sample Data Management Plan
The data management and data sharing plan for the project will adhere to the RCUK
Common Principles on Data Policy and the ESRC Research Data Policy. Specifically, we will
aim to maximise transparency and accountability, enable scrutiny of any data generated,
increase the impact and visibility of the research and address any barriers to access to data
compatible with full ethics compliance.
1. Roles and Responsibilities
The PI has previous experience in managing data similar to those that will be generated in
this project due to her participation in the AHRC-funded Contested Common Land project,
running from 2007 to 2010 and her current ESRC Future Research Leaders Ecologies and
Identities project, running from 2012 to2015. She has also completed the University of
Bristol data security tutorial online. The PI has therefore the capabilities to oversee all data
management activities. The RA will assist with the collection of data and the data analysis
will be a task shared by the PI, CO-I and RA. Prior to any data collection taking place, the PI
will seek the School of Law ethical approval for all aspects of the project including data
management. This aspect of the project will therefore also be scrutinised by the Research
Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law, on which independent members
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serve (in accordance with ESRC requirements). Should any data management difficulties of
an ethical nature arise during the course of the research, the PI will seek the Research Ethics
Committee’s advice.
2. Assessment of existing Data
Considering the novelty of the subject to be studied, the qualitative questions the proposed
research asks and the transformative methodology proposed, there are no existing
resources that can be re-used to explore the subject of the proposed research. This has
been confirmed by searching the online catalogue of the Economic and Social Data Service
(http://www.esds.ac.uk/Lucene/Search.aspx) that has not identified existing dataset
containing such material. The proposed research is therefore innovative and will contribute
to the development of a socio-legal data set on biodiversity offsetting in the UK.
2. Information on New Data and Quality Assurance
2.1 Typology of Data
Data collected during the empirical stage of the project will be of a qualitative nature and
will include:
1) workshops digital recording and transcripts
2) interviews digital recording and transcripts
3) written documents and material objects (e.g. maps, pictures) generated for and during
the Workshops
5) participant observation notes created by the PI and RA during the empirical work
2.2 Format
For the formatting of data the formats recommended by the UK Data Archive for long-term
preservation of qualitative data, digital audio data and documentation will be used (see
table p. 12 at http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/media/2894/managingsharing.pdf)
2.3 Quality Assurance
A check of recording equipment and battery life will be carried out before interviews and
workshops. The accuracy of transcription will be checked by the RA by reading the
completed transcript whilst listening to the recording. Quality will be ensured also through a
peer observation of the workshops. The PI and RA will conduct the workshops together. The
RA will conduct all the interviews but will be accompanied by the PI in the first 3 interviews.
2.4 Ethical considerations
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Any confidential data where consent for its use has not been given by informants will only
be used as background research and will not be made public or placed in the ESRC data
repository. All anonymised and semi-anonymised data and data for which we have consent
for public attribution will be made public and placed in the ESRC data repository.
For ethical issues regarding data collection, i.e. gaining informed consent and anonymising
data, please refer to the Ethics section of the Je-S application.
3. Storage and Sharing of Data
3.1 Back-up Storage Facility
All electronic data, textual or audio, created will be stored on the University of Bristol’s
dedicated Research Data Storage Facility (RDSF) [https://www.acrc.bris.ac.uk/storage.htm],
which provides an integrated resilient petascale facility in which 5TB of disk storage per
Data Steward is free of charge for staff. This two million pound investment provides nightly
backup of all data, with further resilience provided by three geographically distinct storage
locations. A tape library is used for backup purposes and also for long-term, offline data
storage. Only authorised users can access data stored within the RDSF. The RDSF is managed
by Bristol's Advanced Computing Research Centre (ACRC) which has a dedicated steering
group and a rigorous data storage policy
(https://www.acrc.bris.ac.uk/acrc/RDSF_policy.pdf).
All electronic files will be password protected and encrypted using university-supplied
encryption software. Any hardcopy documents will be kept under lock and key in the
University offices of the project team. During field work, any data created will be encrypted
and stored on University-approved hardware until it can be uploaded to the RDSF.
Procedures are also in place to allow authenticated, external collaborators to view, add
and/or edit data in the RDSF, which will be utilised by the project.
3.2 Access and Data sharing
The policies developed for use of the RDSF address the holding of sensitive data and
Freedom of Information ACT 2000 requests. We will be able to limit the number of people
who can access our data stored in the RDSF, by telling the RDSF who can access the data
and providing relevant IP addresses.
In line with the Data Protection Act 1998, data from the interviews and workshops will be
anonymised to remove personal information and the consent of the interviewees gained
before making the data available for re-use by other researchers. Sensitive data will be
classed as strictly confidential and I will make sure that only the core research team (PI, CO-I
and RA) are able to access them (see also the Ethics section of the Je-S application).
3.3 Economic and Social Service Data
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We will make sure that the data will be offered to the Economic and Social Data Service for
archiving within three months of the project ending, and the data documentation will be
prepared according to the UK Data Archive best practice guidance.
4. Costing data management
The costs of data collection (comprised equipment), analysis, and sharing have all been
accounted for in the Justification of Resources attachment. As for the costs of storage, RDSF
provides up to 5TB of disk storage per Data Steward free of charge (as explained above).
Data collected during the course of our project will not exceed the 5TB limit so I will not be
charged for using the facility.
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