Guest Authors: Helen Hardy, Research Policy and University Collaboration Coordinator, Cambridge University Press (Academic) / Curtis Sharma, Research Data Coordinator, Office of Scholarly Communication, University of Cambridge / Kiera McNeice, Research Data Manager, Cambridge University Press (Academic)

The University Collaboration Budget (UCB) funds initiatives that involve direct collaboration between the University and Cambridge University Press (Academic). Winning initiatives strive to further our shared aims, such as research excellence and integrity, scholarly communication and challenging elitism. UCB initiatives are wide-ranging – from developing free online teaching resources for learning scientific computing, to hosting a major academic event to celebrate the anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth and visit to Cambridge.

The Cambridge Data Champions are a voluntary group of researchers and research support staff who meet every two months to discuss challenges, solutions and opportunities related to research data management (RDM). We spoke to lead applicants Curtis Sharma and Kiera McNeice to find out more about their UCB initiative ‘Demystifying RDM Through Collaboration’.

How will your initiative help achieve the University and Cambridge University Press (Academic)’s shared aims?

The Data Champions aim to improve research data management (RDM) practices, resources and tools at the University of Cambridge and beyond. Central to achieving this is collaboration between the Data Champions, the RDMF, and Cambridge University Press (Academic). Together, we aim to identify the areas of greatest need and produce concise, accessible, and user-friendly resources to assist researchers, or indeed anyone needing guidance, to embed good RDM and data sharing in their research practice.

Tell us about your initiative itself – what activities do you plan to carry out?

We will run an annual cycle of six Cambridge Data Champions forums. These will cover initial group work on development of free RDM learning resources to match identified areas of need, and exchange of perspectives from active researchers and Cambridge University Press regarding RDM in order to improve understanding and expectation on the parts of researchers and publishers.

The UCB funding will also support eight collaborative small-group workshops aimed at creating and finalising the previously mentioned guidance resources, for dissemination to students and researchers at Cambridge and beyond. In these small group workshops, we plan to involve individuals at Cambridge University Press (Academic), who we hope will lend appropriate expertise in final production.

What impact do you expect your initiative to have? How will you measure your success?

Long-term, the forums should support sustained or increased collaborative efforts between Data Champions, the RDMF and Cambridge University Press (Academic). This will become increasingly important as the overlapping scholarly communication, open research and RDM landscapes evolve and grow in complexity.

In the coming months, we expect to see a marked rise in attendance when we resume in-person forums over lunch. This format change will improve attendance, which is essential for good communication and collaboration, and for the level of engagement with topics and projects. At the end of the year, we’ll audit forum attendance, level of engagement in collaborations and their tangible and intangible outcomes, and the number and quality of the RDM guidance resources produced. Our aim is to produce 3–4 completed items.

Beyond the timeframe of our UCB initiative, we plan to monitor how useful or well received the resources are in RDM training and learning across the University and beyond.

For more information on the UCB, please see our website.