Greetings RDARIANS,
I’m pleased to say that I’ve finally got around to updating the draft Governance Survey to match the controlled vocabularies being used (so far) by the Open Questionnaire for Research Data Sharing Survey Interest Group (where appropriate). I’ve also added a new question about how institutions fund their research data management infrastructures.
If you’d like to add any comments or suggestions for improvement, the draft survey is at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14ykmcqUi3LmpthpFzdlhV8yDQibPtiYG…. The latest version is on the ’22 Feb’ sheet.
Yours all,
James
—
Dr James A J Wilson
Head of Research Data Services
Research IT Services
Information Services Division, UCL.
1 St. Martin’s Le Grand, London, EC1A 4NP
Tel. 020 3549 5068 (internal: 65068)
Email: ***@***.***
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/services/research-it/research-data
– Show quoted text -From: ville.tenhunen=***@***.***-groups.org On Behalf Of vtenhunen
Sent: 15 February 2019 14:39
To: ***@***.***-groups.org
Subject: [rda-rdari] RDARI: Next web meeting
Hi rdarians,
let’s try to set next web meeting of the RDARI IG.
Here is the Doodle: https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoodl…
I hope you have an opportunity to answer at least on Monday 25th February.
Preliminary agenda for the web meeting:
1. Philadelphia session preparations
– let’s check the situation
2. Governance survey situation
3. IG issues
4. AOB
So, please, click yourself to the Doodle and cast your vote 🙂
BR,
Ville
—
Ville Tenhunen, puh./tel. +358 294 140 102, +358 50 576 2862
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Dear James and dear all,
great job! I fixed some typos and I have a couple of comments:
– On the data infrastructure part, maybe could be of some interest a
detailed question on the connection speed, because this can give an idea
of how the system has the potential to be enlarged, or if the workload
is not well supported.
– Could it be useful a question on how they arrange (or if they have) a
particular data policy in the case the infrastructure is also used by
SME (small medium enterprices)?
My best regards,
Rossella

Hi Rosella,
Thanks for typo fixing, and apologies it’s taken me a while to get back to this.
I’m not entirely sure how we could go about asking a question relating to connection speeds that could be easily answered by respondents. I wouldn’t be able to answer this for UCL, for instance, as the networking varies across different parts of the campus, and practically achievable data transfer speeds are usually substantially less than the theoretical maximum in any case. Did you have a particular way of phrasing the question in mind?
Happy to add a question about whether infrastructures are shared, but again I’m not sure how best to phrase it in a clear and unambiguous manner. Suggestions?
James
—
Dr James A J Wilson
Head of Research Data Services
Research IT Services
Information Services Division, UCL.
1 St. Martin’s Le Grand, London, EC1A 4NP
Tel. 020 3549 5068 (internal: 65068)
Email: ***@***.***
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/services/research-it/research-data
—–Original Message—–
From: aversa=***@***.***-groups.org On Behalf Of raversa
Sent: 24 February 2019 13:45
To: Wilson, James ; Research Data Architectures in Research Institutions IG
Cc: vtenhunen ; j.a.j.wilson=***@***.***-groups.org
Subject: Re: [rda-rdari] RDARI: Next web meeting
Dear James and dear all,
great job! I fixed some typos and I have a couple of comments:
– On the data infrastructure part, maybe could be of some interest a detailed question on the connection speed, because this can give an idea of how the system has the potential to be enlarged, or if the workload is not well supported.
– Could it be useful a question on how they arrange (or if they have) a particular data policy in the case the infrastructure is also used by SME (small medium enterprices)?
My best regards,
Rossella

Dear James,
I see your point and I agree: they are rather technical questions.
The second one maybe can be skipped, it is not urgently relevant for our purposes up to now.
The first one may be phrased in a “soft” way, asking whether the data upload/download is always satisfactory for researchers. This could give us an insight, at least.
Best,
Rossella
________________________________________
From: j.a.j.wilson=***@***.***-groups.org on behalf of jajwilson_UCL
Sent: Friday, March 8, 2019 4:14 PM
To: raversa; Research Data Architectures in Research Institutions IG
Cc: vtenhunen; j.a.j.wilson=***@***.***-groups.org
Subject: Re: [rda-rdari] RDARI: Next web meeting
Hi Rosella,
Thanks for typo fixing, and apologies it’s taken me a while to get back to this.
I’m not entirely sure how we could go about asking a question relating to connection speeds that could be easily answered by respondents. I wouldn’t be able to answer this for UCL, for instance, as the networking varies across different parts of the campus, and practically achievable data transfer speeds are usually substantially less than the theoretical maximum in any case. Did you have a particular way of phrasing the question in mind?
Happy to add a question about whether infrastructures are shared, but again I’m not sure how best to phrase it in a clear and unambiguous manner. Suggestions?
James
—
Dr James A J Wilson
Head of Research Data Services
Research IT Services
Information Services Division, UCL.
1 St. Martin’s Le Grand, London, EC1A 4NP
Tel. 020 3549 5068 (internal: 65068)
Email: ***@***.***
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/services/research-it/research-data
—–Original Message—–
From: aversa=***@***.***-groups.org On Behalf Of raversa
Sent: 24 February 2019 13:45
To: Wilson, James ; Research Data Architectures in Research Institutions IG
Cc: vtenhunen ; j.a.j.wilson=***@***.***-groups.org
Subject: Re: [rda-rdari] RDARI: Next web meeting
Dear James and dear all,
great job! I fixed some typos and I have a couple of comments:
– On the data infrastructure part, maybe could be of some interest a detailed question on the connection speed, because this can give an idea of how the system has the potential to be enlarged, or if the workload is not well supported.
– Could it be useful a question on how they arrange (or if they have) a particular data policy in the case the infrastructure is also used by SME (small medium enterprices)?
My best regards,
Rossella

Greetings RDARIans.,
I’ve made a few more tweaks and updates to the questionnaire based on Ville’s suggestions below and added versions of Rossella’s additional questions. Latest version at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14ykmcqUi3LmpthpFzdlhV8yDQibPtiYG….
I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Philadelphia next week!
Yours,
James
—
Dr James A J Wilson
Head of Research Data Services
Research IT Services
Information Services Division, UCL.
1 St. Martin’s Le Grand, London, EC1A 4NP
Tel. 020 3549 5068 (internal: 65068)
Email: ***@***.***
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/services/research-it/research-data
—–Original Message—–
From: Ville Tenhunen
Sent: 17 March 2019 17:38
To: Wilson, James ; raversa ; Research Data Architectures in Research Institutions IG
Cc: j.a.j.wilson=***@***.***-groups.org
Subject: Re: [rda-rdari] RDARI: Next web meeting
Hi James, Rossella, all,
Thank you to manage this. I’m sorry that I’m little bit late with my comments and proposals, but please find some below. Let’s discuss these tomorrow in the web meeting:
Greetings RDARIans.,
I’ve made a few more tweaks and updates to the questionnaire based on Ville’s suggestions below and added versions of Rossella’s additional questions. Latest version at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14ykmcqUi3LmpthpFzdlhV8yDQibPtiYG….
I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Philadelphia next week!
Yours,
James
—
Dr James A J Wilson
Head of Research Data Services
Research IT Services
Information Services Division, UCL.
1 St. Martin’s Le Grand, London, EC1A 4NP
Tel. 020 3549 5068 (internal: 65068)
Email: ***@***.***
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/services/research-it/research-data
—–Original Message—–
From: Ville Tenhunen
Sent: 17 March 2019 17:38
To: Wilson, James ; raversa ; Research Data Architectures in Research Institutions IG
Cc: j.a.j.wilson=***@***.***-groups.org
Subject: Re: [rda-rdari] RDARI: Next web meeting
Hi James, Rossella, all,
Thank you to manage this. I’m sorry that I’m little bit late with my comments and proposals, but please find some below. Let’s discuss these tomorrow in the web meeting:
On 08/03/2019 17:14, Wilson, James wrote:
> Hi Rosella,
>
> Thanks for typo fixing, and apologies it’s taken me a while to get back to this.
>
> I’m not entirely sure how we could go about asking a question relating to connection speeds that could be easily answered by respondents. I wouldn’t be able to answer this for UCL, for instance, as the networking varies across different parts of the campus, and practically achievable data transfer speeds are usually substantially less than the theoretical maximum in any case. Did you have a particular way of phrasing the question in mind?
Hmm… I see the point. The answer could be hard to me also even if we have quite simple network. Is it possible to ask “maximum data transfer speed”. Real speed is something else, but this maximum is one parameter when organization makes development plans.
Greetings RDARIans.,
I’ve made a few more tweaks and updates to the questionnaire based on Ville’s suggestions below and added versions of Rossella’s additional questions. Latest version at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14ykmcqUi3LmpthpFzdlhV8yDQibPtiYG….
I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Philadelphia next week!
Yours,
James
—
Dr James A J Wilson
Head of Research Data Services
Research IT Services
Information Services Division, UCL.
1 St. Martin’s Le Grand, London, EC1A 4NP
Tel. 020 3549 5068 (internal: 65068)
Email: ***@***.***
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/services/research-it/research-data
—–Original Message—–
From: Ville Tenhunen
Sent: 17 March 2019 17:38
To: Wilson, James ; raversa ; Research Data Architectures in Research Institutions IG
Cc: j.a.j.wilson=***@***.***-groups.org
Subject: Re: [rda-rdari] RDARI: Next web meeting
Hi James, Rossella, all,
Thank you to manage this. I’m sorry that I’m little bit late with my comments and proposals, but please find some below. Let’s discuss these tomorrow in the web meeting:
On 08/03/2019 17:14, Wilson, James wrote:
> Hi Rosella,
>
> Thanks for typo fixing, and apologies it’s taken me a while to get back to this.
>
> I’m not entirely sure how we could go about asking a question relating to connection speeds that could be easily answered by respondents. I wouldn’t be able to answer this for UCL, for instance, as the networking varies across different parts of the campus, and practically achievable data transfer speeds are usually substantially less than the theoretical maximum in any case. Did you have a particular way of phrasing the question in mind?
Hmm… I see the point. The answer could be hard to me also even if we have quite simple network. Is it possible to ask “maximum data transfer speed”. Real speed is something else, but this maximum is one parameter when organization makes development plans.
> Happy to add a question about whether infrastructures are shared, but again I’m not sure how best to phrase it in a clear and unambiguous manner. Suggestions?
Somehting like that?
– Do your infrastructure is used also by private sector organizations (like SMEs)?
– If yes, please describe…
Then about the questionnaire:
# One proposal for a new question pair:
– Do your institution offer free of charge stoarege space for researchers or research groups?
– if yes, how large free space is (in GB)?
# Few smaller comments about the questions (in
https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.g…):
– Type of institution
Small addition proposals: a) Computing Center => Computing/IT Centre, b) should we add “Research data infrastructure” here? Just in case…
– Do we need email information? If yes, then we should describe why and how (because GDPR etc.). Of course email information makes possible to identify dublicates etc.
– Nation
Shoud this be “Country”? Country codes we can get from ISO 3166 standard
(https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wik…) or ISO
3166 alpha 2
(https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wik…). The latest include also Kosovo (XK) which is missing in the list of the ISO 3166 numeric codes. (I marked this also in to the Google sheet)
– Total size of institution (staff, students, etc.) Should we define this as a number of the users in the IdM, AD or similar? Is the idea of the question to find the size of the system or local community? If yes, then the scale should be larger than “up to 50,
50- 500, 500 – 5000, more than 5000” (For example our university have approx. 62000 people in our IdM (incl. students, staff etc.). I propose
scale: up to 1000, 1000-10000, more than 10000.
If we count only researchers or staff, then the original scale is very good.
– What Research Data Management services are provided at your institution?
Just thought; Could we have here also “Questionnaire tool for surveys/sensitive data surveys”?
– If so, who is responsible for overall RDM planning and infrastructure management Should we add “library staff”? (Or what is the proper term similar than “IT administrators”?)
– How many persons are employed to provide the data/RDM service(s) In terms of full-time equivalents (i.e. one person full time = 1)?
FTE is proper meter here.
– Who is responsible for defining the overall vision for Research Data Management over 10+ years?
Should we add “library staff”? (Or what is the proper term similar than “IT administrators”?)
# Missing values
For the questionnaire we have to decide some code book things like how to handle missing values?
For example in one project which I’m helping in data management issues use following definitions for missing values:
‐9: No answer
‐8: Question was not asked
‐4: Respondent stopped filling out the questionnaire.
‐3: Answer is not plausible
‐1: Question not posed
# What next?
I think we can move forward after Philadelphia. I mean that we have good enough question set and we can test it with the real form (which tool we will use?).
Then we have to finalize codebook base on current work and prepare ourselves to analyze the data. Then we need to find addresses of potential audience.
… but let’s discuss also this tomorrow 🙂
BR,
Ville