After 20 years of consulting via Charles Beagrie Ltd, Neil and Daphne retired at the end of March 2022. All of you will know that working in digital preservation and research data management is as much about the great people as the digits and data – we feel truly privileged to have worked with so many talented and dedicated professionals either as clients, associates and partners, or colleagues. Thank you all for making our careers interesting and fun as well as work.

You may know that we have been working part-time for a few years as we transitioned to retirement. Neil is looking forward to having even more time for archaeology, C20th architecture + art and design, cycling (Belgium with friends in September) and walking (Skye in April), beer, and his other interests. He will retain some professional interest in digital preservation and research data management as a Commissioner for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW) and also maintain his active involvement with the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). Daphne will be sharing some of these activities, and also focusing on Art (image credits!). Finally, at the risk of sounding like disgraced politicians, we are also looking forward to spending more time with our family!

The Charles Beagrie website will remain available for the foreseeable future although it will not be updated once one or two publications are added over the year. The site is archived by the Internet Archive and the UK Web Archive and re-directs will be put in place should the site be taken down or re-purposed at a later date.

A case study of that review has now been published as an open-access article by Insights the journal of UKSG.

The case study outlines the review of RDM services carried out at the University of Oxford in partnership with university staff between November 2019 and November 2020. It aims to describe and discuss the processes in undertaking a university-wide review of services supporting RDM and developing a future road map for them, with a strong emphasis on the design processes, methodological approaches and infographics used. The future road map developed is a live document, which the consulting team handed over to the University at the end of the consultation process. It provides a suggested RDM action plan for the University that will continue to evolve and be iterated in the light of additional internal costings, available resources and reprioritization in the budget cycle for each academic year.

It is hoped that the contents of this case study will be useful to other research-intensive universities with an interest in developing and planning RDM services to support their researchers.

We are delighted to say that our latest report is now publicly available and free to download from the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). “Data-driven discovery: the value and impact of EMBL-EBI managed data resources” covers 44 open data resources in the life sciences managed by EMBL-EBI.

It is the largest assessment of its type and the work is the culmination of some 10 years of studies by Neil Beagrie and John Houghton assessing the value and impact of open research data. More than 4,900 researchers participated in the study survey, making it one of the largest recent surveys covering open data and open research.

The latest impact assessment was done in 2020-21 and provides a successive snapshot in time after a similar report for EMBL-EBI in 2015-6.

The key takeaway messages of the new report are:

• Significant increase in users (more than double) and their intensity of use since 2015-16;
• Major increases across all measures of value and impact since 2015-16;
• We found that EMBL-EBI managed data resources present exceptional value for money in terms of the value returned and impact compared to the costs of running them.

You can access the full press release on the study, the Executive Summary, or the Full Report from EMBL-EBI here

Earlier this week we launched a new impact survey for the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). This survey will revisit and building on our impact work with EMBL-EBI five years ago.

For over 25 years, EMBL-EBI has been a portal to the world’s biological data, working to serve the ever-growing, wonderfully diverse life science community. If open data from EMBL-EBI have ever saved you 15 minutes, this is your chance to return the favour. Please fill in EMBL-EBI’s impact survey to help estimate the value of their resources. Closes 31 March.

Between April and August 2019, staff at Charles Beagrie Ltd had the privilege of working on a digital preservation consultancy for the Science Museums Group, one of the UK’s key groups of national museums.

With five museums and a collections centre around the UK, the Science Museum Group consists of the Science Museum in London, National Railway Museum in York, National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, Locomotion in County Durham, the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, and the National Collections Centre in Wroughton.

Over several decades, the Group’s digitization programme has built up significant digital collections and the museums are increasingly having to manage born-digital content, both internally generated and acquired.

SMG recognised that digital preservation had become business critical and was committed to implementing best practice for managing its collection and other digital assets. It commissioned a digital preservation consultancy from us to:

• Advise on SMG’s production of a Digital Asset Register.
• Assess levels of digital preservation for archive collection and corporate information at the National  Railway Museum (NRM) prior to applying for archive service accreditation for NRM.
• Produce a digital preservation gap analysis across SMG as a whole to highlight key risks, opportunities, and priorities for the organisation. This would be used by SMG to develop its digital preservation strategy and the business case for resourcing it.

Our work was completed in August 2019. It has been gratifying subsequently to see the progress that has been made by SMG:

• The National Railway Museum achieved its archive service accreditation in the second half of last year.
• The recommendations in our report were accepted by the senior management group. The priority recommendations have started to be implemented this year including:
  • SMG has joined the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) as an associate member.
  • SMG is advertising for the post of a digital preservation manager.

It has been great to see SMG join the DPC and increase the membership representation from the museum sector. We are sure that like other members, it will benefit from the sharing of experience, skills, and expertise that this brings.

The new digital preservation manager post is also a key opportunity to make a difference within a major national organisation. Our experience of working with SMG staff was extremely positive and the work environment is inspiring. Do consider applying if the job is of interest. The closing date for applications is 12th October.

What to keep in terms of research data has been a recognized issue for some time but research data management (and, in particular, appraisal and selection) has become a more significant focus in recent years. Researchers, librarians, data curators, and policy makers all need to answer the question, what research data should be kept? We can’t keep it all, because that would be too expensive and time-consuming, but we have to keep data that is irreplaceable and unique in its value for future research, some or to enable it to be reused and validated, to enable peer review to be informed, and to enable there to be trust in research findings. Types of data needing to be retained also vary and may include related materials such as software and documentation. How much and what is enough?

In this webinar, organized by LIBER’s Research Data Management Working Group, we’ll dive into the topic of what to keep with expert Neil Beagrie, author of a recent Jisc-funded report on this topic. Neil is director of consultancy at Charles Beagrie. He is an experienced senior consultant and an internationally recognized expert with extensive experience in research data management and digital preservation. He was awarded the 2014 Archival Technology Medal by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) for his long-term contributions to digital preservation.

Attendees will learn about:

• Existing practice and guidance for appraisal and review for research data and related materials;
• Generic/disciplinary/sub-disciplinary differences in defining research data e.g. practice-based research in the arts and humanities;
• Research integrity and data sharing as strategic drivers for research data management;
• Differences in levels of curation and considerations of value and cost.

The webinar will be hosted by Dr Birgit Schmidt and Rob Grim. Birgit is Head of Knowledge Commons at Göttingen State and University Library and Chair of LIBER’s Research Infrastructure Steering Committee. Rob is an Economics (Data) Librarian at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Co-chair of LIBER’s Research Data Management Working Group.

Registration via https://www.anymeeting.com/AccountManager/RegEv.aspx?PIID=EE52DD8980463C

Twenty years ago format obsolescence was seen as the greatest long-term threat to digital information.  Arguably, experience to date has shown that funding and organisational challenges are perhaps more significant threats. I hope this presentation helps those grappling with these challenges and shows some key advances in how to use knowledge of costs, benefits and value to support long-term sustainability of digital data and services.

These are the slides from my keynote presentation to the joint Digital Preservation Coalition / Jisc workshop on Digital Assets and Digital Liabilities – the Value of Data held in Glasgow in February 2018. The slides summarise work over the last decade in the key areas of exploring costs, benefits and value for data. The slides posted here have additional slide notes and references to new publications since the workshop and some modifications such as removal of animations. One day I hope to have time to synthesis this presentation in an accessible way as a more extensive article but hope this slide deck on Slide share at https://www.slideshare.net/Nbeagrie is a useful interim resource.

“What To Keep?” a new Jisc research data report by Charles Beagrie Ltd has just been published by Jisc. You can access the full report directly at: https://repository.jisc.ac.uk/7262/

What to keep in terms of research data has been a recognised issue for some time but research data management and in particular appraisal and selection (i.e. “what to keep and why”) has become a more significant focus in recent years as volumes and diversity of data have grown, and as the available infrastructure for ‘keeping’ has become more diverse.

The purpose of the What to Keep report is to provide new insights that will be useful to institutions, research funders, researchers, publishers, and Jisc on what research data to keep and why, the current position, and suggestions for improvement.

The analysis of emerging themes and mappings is available as a set of tables. Seven mini case studies illustrate in more detail the approaches and rationale for what to keep for different repositories, stakeholders and disciplinary areas.

The report provides insights on how what to keep decisions can be guided and supported, and the ten study recommendations and the potential implementations for them, provide practical suggestions for future development.

Charles Beagrie Ltd have been providing additional expert resource in Open Science and Open Scholarship to Jisc, a partner in the EOSCpilot project funded by the EC’s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation programme. The EOSC – European Open Science Cloud – aims to create a trusted environment for hosting and processing research data to support EU science.

We helped to support the finalisation of draft policy recommendations aimed at encouraging implementation and take-up of the EOSC. This involved supporting consultation on the draft policy recommendations, and helping to prioritise and develop them in more detail, to produce a coherent policy proposition.

We look forward to seeing the final public recommendations and future development of EOSC.

Jisc is working to develop shared infrastructure, influence policy and provide guidance to support institutions with the growing need for robust research data management. There is a wide-range of needs and existing provision for creation, collection, storage and preservation, and reuse of data within UK Higher Education.

What research data should be kept?

Researchers, data curators and policy makers all need to answer the question, what research data should be kept? We can’t keep it all, because that would be too expensive and time-consuming. However, we have to keep data that is irreplaceable and unique in its value for future research; to enable it to be reused and validated: to enable peer review to be informed; and to enable there to be trust in research findings. Types of data needing to be retained vary and may include related materials such as software and documentation. But how much and what is enough? Obviously, there is no single answer to that: it depends on many factors, but what are those factors, and how should we weight them? These remain difficult and open questions, but this year Jisc is working with us to take a step toward answering them.

How can we identify what to keep?

We are setting out to explore, what actually is the optimal data to keep from research projects conducted at UK institutions? Over the course of the rest of 2018, our project will work with a small number of research areas to find out. What conditions, such as openness or timescales, might be ideal? We will consult the views of researchers (as data creators and data users), research funders, ethics professionals, archivists, research data managers, peer reviewers, other research users, and others on these questions. We will dig into the reasons for their views, and into whether research data is currently kept in line with those views, or not.

Why are we carrying out this investigation now?

This work comes at a critical time in the evolution of research data management and sharing. At the policy level, the recommendations from the UK Open Research Data Taskforce are expected shortly. These may take into account both the recommendations to Government of the 2017 report by Dame Wendy Hall and Jérôme Pesenti into the future of the UK artificial intelligence industry and the recent Government announcements around this, where research data can be a key input into AI tools. The availability of research data is also a matter of concern to those interested in research integrity and reproducibility. Relevant infrastructure investments include both the Jisc research data shared service and the increasing activity around the European Open Science Cloud.

Both policy and infrastructure investments need better information about the extent and nature of the research data that needs to be kept, under what conditions, and for how long. Our 2018 project will not provide all this information, but it will explore current practices and take the next step.