Cpd23 Thing 6 Online networking

Linked In - Having looked at the example profiles for this and being very impressed, my conlcusion was that I need to do quite a lot of work on my CV and resume to make it worth joining. Not a lot of point joining and not making the best effort to present yourself. Hoping to catch up with this in reflection week or think about it more in Thing 22 Promoting Yourself. Must not put it off!

Facebook - joined this too but decided to keep it for personal use and maintain a little distance between professional life and home life

LISNPN - I have joined this but had trouble uploading my photo

Social media and research - ALISS conference 20 July 2011

Slides from the conference


For me, the most interesting points from this really useful event were:

1. the use of tools like Netvibes or Mixxt to manage your online life and bring together information from your RSS feeds, blog posts, bookmarks etc on one page which can be your home page. You can also have a 'private' page for personal use and a 'public' one for sharing with your researchers. For an example see Sarah Oxford's page http://ednetwork.mixxt.com./ who explained to us how she had set up a quasi-independent social network, linked from the university pages, to share information with researchers. Several other subject advisors/librarians had effectively moved away from using the formal university website and set up similar networks using the free tools.  This made me think about the future management of the intranet and internet at my research unit.  Sarah was happy to share her guide to setting up Netvibes http://tinyurl.com/3oojf4w  and mixtt http://tinyurl.com/3vjserv
2. Miggie Pickton, University of Northampton  talked us through her Web tools for researchers aimed at helping researchers identify which tools are useful to them at each stage of the research process
3. Paula Ann Beasley and Linda Norbury, University of Birmingham, case study type report detailed their practical experience of basic Web 2.0 training for researchers and lecturers. They had identified a knowledge gap and very varied levels of expertise which the training sought to even out. One point was that the training material could be shared for use in other universities. As logon instructions etc rapidly outdate, an Open Access environment would be ideal for this training material so that it could be amended each time it was used.
4. Anna Drabble's, (Emerald Publishing) presentation http://www.slideshare.net/heatherdawson/coventry2011drabble answered some of the questions about how social media is affecting research. An international survey investigated the use of social media in the research workflow. Concluded that: social media does not yet mark a watershed in the research process, but has increased the tasks and the number of sources that need to be checked; while blogs, wikis, tweets and social networks are being used to disseminate research, the academic journal is still regarded as the most important dissemination channel; this is due to the fact that other tools are not taken into account in REF, but this may change if Open Access campaigners have success.

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Records management of research archives

I recently listed the paper questionnaires etc that we have in our offices from past social care research projects, and tried to establish how long they should be retained for. I also started to look at the electronic data. I thought it might be helpful if I summarised my findings and the conclusions that I reached from a practical "on the ground" viewpoint.

Findings
    

·    details about arrangements for the future retention or storage of research data from each project were hard to locate as they could be found in a variety of sources. They were most likely to be recorded on ethical approval forms.

·    generally the arrangements were rather vague but sometimes 7 or 10 years was specified

·         there are no specific guidelines for social care. The guidelines that do exist are: Medical Research Council (2000). Good research practice, Department of Health (2007). Research involving the NHS: retention of records, Department of Health (2005). Research governance framework for health and social care, 2nd ed. and Van den Eynden, V., Corti, L., Woollard, M., Bishop, L. and Horton, L. (2011). Managing and sharing data: Best practice for researchers.

 ·   the consensus seemed to be 10 years for retention, in line with the Medical Research Council's guidelines, while the UK Data Archive focus is on permanent retention, with advice on preparing and tidying data and gaining the necessary consents to allow it to be deposited and archived      

• Research data is exempt from some obligations of the Data Protection Act. The Act permits the use of personal data for “research purposes” provided that “the data is not processed in such a way that substantial damage or substantial distress is, or is likely to be caused to any data subject” and “the results of the research or any resulting statistics are not made available in a form which identifies data subjects” (Data Protection Act 1998, s 33). The same section of the Act exempts personal data collected for research from the rights of access set out in s 7 and allows it to be processed for purposes other than for which it was originally obtained. More importantly, for the focus of this project, s 33 also states that “personal data which are processed only for research purposes in compliance with the relevant conditions may, notwithstanding the fifth data protection principle, be kept indefinitely”.
• researchers that I spoke to were focused on the requirements of the Data Protection Act and on security and confidentiality as stressed in the ethical approval process.  Their perception was that the messages put forward by the UK Data Archive about data sharing and preserving were incompatible with their ethical obligations.
• an initial look at electronic data for projects confirmed my suspicion that tidying, sorting or managing electronic data from projects can really only be done by those immediately involved in that project because of problems with: permissions and access to files; working out which is the definitive version; the need for accompanying documentation to help interpret the data; and the need for knowledge of the software and methods used

·     in reality this is not going to happen for past projects as research staff simply do not have the time

Conclusions

 ·    Principal Investigators need to try and be more explicit about retention periods and archiving at the start of the project. It would be helpful if research ethics & governance committees encouraged this
    

·     the only way I can see us being able to manage our research data and make it fit for archive deposit, is if arrangement and plans for this are made at the outset of a project.

·     in an ideal world time would be allocated for tidying and preparing data for deposit and this would be written into the proposal.  

 ·    the UK Data Archive have a tool that can be used for costing the additional expenses needed to make research data shareable beyond the initial research team

 ·    This type of forward planning will make it easier to reconcile the call for preservation and future access, with ethical considerations of security and confidentiality. 

·      I suspect that the ability to make research data available may eventually become a condition laid down by sponsors and funders as well as journal publishers, as it is already in the science community. Authors for The Lancet are advised that they may be asked to provide the raw data for research papers up to 10 years after publication and the Economic and Social Research Council already require researchers to offer data generated from their grants to the UK Data Archive. 

     

Cpd23 Thing 4 - Twitter and RSS

Twitter - I've signed up and tried to keep my profile consistent as per Thing 3. I'm surprised by how brief the tweets are. It seems to me that they are almost more like bookmarks, at least the useful ones are. I think perhaps the key with all the different forms of social media and current awareness tools, is to try them out and find one or two that suit both your purposes and your personality.  I can already see blogging as useful to me as a tool for recording professional activities, reflecting and sharing. I can see Twitter as useful for drawing attention to new posts on my blog or others, or to ask a specific question. I can't see me following it all the time.

RSS - always wondered what this was all about and now I know!

Thing 3 - Personal brand

1. Google search revealed pretty much what I expected, references to staff lists on web sites and an ancient publication. Nothing awful but not great either.

2. I thought really hard about the focus and style of my blog and took ages faffing around with it. I agree with the point about keeping one's professional online presence consistent. As I haven't had one up until now at least I can start as I mean to go on!

3. It raised another issue which I don't know the answer to. I want people interested in social care, managing research information etc to locate my blog. I know I can tag individual posts but can you tag a blog as a whole I wonder?

Thing 2 - Searching blogs and posting comments

1. Didn't get off to a very good start at all because I couldn't post a comment using my Google account. It didn't seem to recognise me even though I was signed in. Eventally got round it by unticking the "stay signed in" box, but I'm still a bit confused.

2. I found quite a few blogs using the delicious bookmarks. Picked a few where I had something in common, and a few which looked very professional which I could aspire to. Some blogs didn't seem to include the option to follow them.

3. One thing which did occur to me is that I am not really sure of the best way to locate blogs outside of the cpd23 bookmarks. For example, I wanted to find others relating to social care or research libraries or for people I know in Kent. Must investigate the Google Blog Search, but does anyone have any tips?