History

Overview

2024-2026: Implementation of Comprehensive Research Data Strategy

The Comprehensive Research Data Strategy Task Force (CRDSTF) summarized their findings in an internal report completed in September 2024. Since that time, partners in key service areas for research data (Office of Research & Innovation, University Libraries, and ITS) have worked together to implement the goals set out in the CRDSTF report. Some examples of these efforts include: 

• This website, which serves as a hub of information relating to research data.
• Development of the new data repository, SANDY, which offers features that were unavailable in the prior data repository. SANDY adheres to the FAIR data ecosystem standard and meets federal government expectations for repositories to share research outputs from federally funded research. Further, researchers can access statistics that can support documentation of effort and impact. 
• The 2025-26 Year of Data campaign, which was designed to increase researcher awareness of the scope of research data management over the life cycle of a project, as well as increase awareness of existing services provided by UNL. Each month focused on a different topic related to the research data life cycle, with flyers mailed out to departments and units, monthly write-ups in Research News, the creation of new materials and sharing of information on the dedicated webpage. 
• Development of the Research Data Life Cycle Micro-credential, a free professional development opportunity open to all students, staff, and faculty at UNL through Canvas. Designed and coordinated under a working group including Engineering and Computing Education Core, Holland Computing Center (HCC), the Libraries, the Methodology, Analytics, and Psychometrics (MAP) Academy, and the Methodology and Evaluation Research Core Facility (MERC), among others, the micro-credential addresses the goals of developing a research data management training program, and creating a micro-credentialing opportunity for labs/teams.
• Expanded outreach efforts by the Holland Computing Center, to increase awareness of available services and capabilities.

The above are just the most visible portions of the work done within the two years after the CRDSTF report was completed. Many more goals have been completed or are in process, including hiring for key support positions, development of informative content and tools, and coordination between service providers and other units to create supports for researchers and research data. 

2022-2024: The Comprehensive Research Data Strategy Task Force

The Comprehensive Research Data Strategy Task Force was convened to research, plan and author a comprehensive research data strategy for UNL, 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. The Task Force was given a charge issued by the executive sponsorship to the Task Force membership upon launch in Fall 2022. In the first stage of the Task Force work, it focused on active research data storage, including human infrastructure factors that help researchers navigate the storage landscape.

Scope

The strategy encompasses 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 considered 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 focuses 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.

This Task Force was not by itself an implementing group, although there was some overlap between membership and individuals in implementing service units. The Task Force offered 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.

Members

¹Previous Dean of the Libraries, Claire Stewart, was among the executive sponsors at the time the Task Force was initiated. Liz Lorang, Task Force Co-Chair, is now Dean of Libraries.

Post hoc note: ORED was rebranded as R&I, the Office of Research and Innovation, in 2024

2022: NIH Data Management and Sharing Task Force

In Fall 2022, a working group composed of some individuals who later became members of the Comprehensive Research Data Strategy Task Force developed a webpage to point researchers to resources relevant to developing data management and sharing plans. This effort was in part to help prepare campus researchers for the January 2023 launch of the National Institutes of Health Data Management and Sharing Policy.