Overview
The Comprehensive Research Data Strategy Task Force was convened to research, plan and author a comprehensive research data strategy for UNL, which will be a holistic, university-wide approach to anticipating, managing and supporting the increasingly complex set of challenges that contemporary researchers face as they create, use and maintain research data. The purpose of the strategy is to enable and sustain groundbreaking research, scholarship and creative activity; maintain and grow institutional competitiveness; mitigate a variety of risks; and avoid redundancy of resources and effort, while anticipating critical gaps and identifying strategic directions for resources and investment.
Scope
The strategy will encompass the full research data life cycle, from project planning/pre-award to data archiving and preservation after active and/or sponsored project phases.
Throughout its work, the Task Force will consider security, confidentiality and privacy, compliance, legal and ethical issues, and intellectual property and ownership, including NU system policies on research data and security.
The strategy will focus on both the technology infrastructures and the expertise (professional, human infrastructures) needed to partner to advance research, and strategies for sustaining and growing both.
Research data for the purposes of this data strategy is defined as digital data – from all disciplines, inclusive of big and small data. Management of physical specimens, such as collections or biological samples, as well as hard copy paper materials will be taken up beyond the scope of this Task Force.
The Task Force is not by itself an implementing group, though is some overlap between membership and individuals in implementing service units. The Task Force will offer strategies for making campus researchers aware of service offerings. Research data services resulting from the strategy must be commonly offered to all researchers, advertised and findable, transparent, synergistic, coordinated across service providing units and non-duplicative/non-competing.