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STFC has updated its Scientific Data policy. STFC's Executive Board recently approved the introduction of an over-riding data policy to provide guidance to its staff and communities. The policy consists of a set of general principles that cover the wide variety of scientific communities and existing practices that fall within STFC's remit. The key principle of the policy is that all funded activities are required to have a data management plan, which must be in line with recommended good practice. These individual plans will then have the added check of being subject to approval by the relevant STFC boards and panels. Although this has not been a critical issue, a single standardised policy has clear advantages in a single organisation. The policy was drawn up by an internal technical working group set up in 2009 and is in line with current thinking as well as improving transparency for those working for and with STFC.

JISC's Managing Research Data programme has, with an investment of nearly £2M, funded a strand of eight Research Data Management Infrastructure (RDMI) projects to provide the UK Higher Education sector with examples of good research data management. The RDMI projects have identified requirements to manage data created by researchers within an institution, or across a group of institutions, and then piloted research data management infrastructures at institutional, departmental or research group level, to address these requirements. This report provides an analysis and synthesis of the benefits from this work identified by the eight RDMI projects in their benefits case studies, the benefits and enhancements that accrued to existing tools and methodologies from them, and the emerging business cases (as of June 2011) for sustainability being built by the RDMI projects.

This year's APA conference addresses the theme "Putting the infrastructure in place for digital preservation" and brings together leaders in the field from Europe and around the world, from academic, large scientific research, industrial and commercial stakeholders. Topics will include: * the challenges which major information holders and solution providers are addressing * the latest news on developing a coherent view of what works in digital preservation and how the research efforts and developments fit together * what infrastructure is being put in place to help you * how to check whether you or those you fund are doing an adequate job in preserving information - and how to improve * how to build the business case for preservation * how preservation fits into the commercial world, including privacy and security * success stories from which we can learn The keynote speaker will be EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes, Vice-President for the Digital Agenda; we also have speakers from the Centre of Excellence for Digital Preservation in India, the US National Archives (NARA) and Library of Congress. A senior representative of the British Government will speak on the second day. Looking at the role of the commercial sector in digital preservation and re-use, Microsoft, Google, Oracle and IBM will be taking part in a discussion panel on the High Level Expert Group's report 'Riding the Wave'. The purpose of the conference is to inform our members and the wider international communities about progress in the area of digital preservation and related infrastructure from many sources, academic as well as industrial and commercial. We aim to get feedback about needs, expectations and experiences. Traditional memory institutions and at least some of the scientific community have been aware for some time about the importance of digital preservation and it is very clear that commerce, industry, the arts, banking and investment in

This collaborative project sought to promote research data management skills of postgraduate research students in the health studies discipline through a specially-developed training programme which focuses on qualitative, unstructured research data. The project was funded by JISC under their Managing Research Data (JISCMRD) Programme. The project ran from 1st October 2010 to 31st July 2011.

CARDIO enables you to: 1. collaboratively assess data management requirements, activity, and capacity at your institution 2. build consensus between data creators, information managers and service providers 3. identify practical goals for improvement in data management provision and support; 4. identify operational inefficiencies and opportunities for cost saving; 5. make a compelling case to senior managers for investment in data management support

The Information Retrieval area has a strong and long tradition dating back to the 1960s in producing and processing scientific data resulting from the experimental evaluation of search algorithms and search systems. This attitude towards evaluation has led to fast and continuous progress in the evolution of information retrieval systems and search engines. However, in order to make these data test collections understandable and usable they must be endowed with some auxiliary information, i.e., provenance, quality, context, etc. Therefore, there is a need for metadata models able to describe the main characteristics of evaluation data. In addition, in order to make distributed data collections accessible, sharable, and interoperable, there is a need for advanced data infrastructures. In contrast, the information retrieval area has barely explored and exploited the possibilities for managing, storing, and effectively accessing the scientific data produced during the evaluation studies by making use of the methods typical of the database and knowledge management areas. Over the years, the information retrieval area has produced a vast set of large test collections which have become the main benchmark tools of the area and ensure reproducible and comparable experiments. However, these same collections have not been organised into coherent and integrated infrastructures which make them accessible, searchable, citable, exploitable, and re-usable to all possibly interested researchers, developers, and user communities. It is thus time for these three communities - information retrieval, databases, and knowledge management - to join efforts, meet, and cooperate to address the problem of envisaging and designing useful infrastructures able to coherently manage pertinent data collections and sources of information, and so take concrete steps towards developing them. Indeed, the information retrieval experts need to recognise this need, while the database and knowledge

Repository Fringe 2011 aims to showcase a range of innovative repository and related developments to coincide with the 'preview week' (yes, that does mean cheaper tickets) for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Designed for developers and coders, repository managers and practitioners, the programme always has an 'unconference' feel, and will feature contributions from a wide range of repository actors.

This Report explores the roles, rights, responsibilities and relationships of institutions, data centres and other key stakeholders who work with data. It concentrates primarily on the UK scene with some reference to other relevant experience and opinion, and is framed as "a snapshot" of a relatively fast-moving field. It is strategically positioned to provide a bridge between the high-level RIN Framework of Principles and Guidelines for the stewardship of research data, and practitioner-focussed technical development work

Research data are an increasingly important and expensive output of the scholarly research process, across all disciplines. They are an essential part of the evidence necessary to evaluate research results, and to reconstruct the events and processes leading to them. Their value increases as they are aggregated into collections and as they become more available for re-use to address new and challenging research questions. But we shall realise the value of data only if we move beyond research policies, practices and support systems developed in a different era. We need new approaches to managing and providing access to research data. The framework is structured around five broad principles which provide a guide to the development of policy and practice for a range of key players: universities, research institutions, libraries and other information providers, publishers, and research funders as well as researchers themselves. In seeking to develop the framework further, all parties need to work collaboratively and to ensure that it is sensitive to the needs of researchers and the different contexts in which they work. All parties must also take account of relevant technical and policy-making developments in the UK and overseas.

The aim of the Institutional Data Management Blueprint (IDMB) project is to create a practical and attainable institutional framework for managing research data that facilitates ambitious national and international e-research practice. The objective is to produce a framework for managing research data that encompasses a whole institution (exemplified by the University of Southampton) and based on an analysis of current data management requirements for a representative group of disciplines with a range of different data.

The Project has several broad aims: To specify in practical terms how effective data management may best be performed within the IdMRC's research projects and, by extension, similar projects undertaken elsewhere. ERIM will be looking primarily at the outputs of the KIM Project, alongside exemplar engineering studies in fields such as engineering metrology and constraint management. Both technical and social/legal issues will be considered. To explore the opportunities for and barriers to the re-use of engineering information, including the results of research conducted using highly sensitive industrial data and information. To explore the opprtunities and requirements for the re-use of research data sets. Of particular interest is the extent to which future re-users of the data will need to manipulate them. Metrics for determining the suitability of data for re-use will be investigated.

Incremental is funded through the JISC Managing Research Data programme, with the aim to support researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow. Through our scoping work, we have found that many researchers are unclear about best practice in data management and unaware of where they could locate support and guidance. They wanted simple and engaging guidance and access to tailored support

The Supporting Data Management Infrastructure for the Humanities (Sudamih) project aims to address a coherent range of requirements for the more effective management of data (broadly defined) within the Humanities at an institutional level.

The project's overall aim was to contribute to new models, workflows and tools for academic data sharing within a complex and dynamic information environment which included increased emphasis on stewardship of institutional knowledge assets of all types; new technologies to enhance e-Research; new research council policies and mandates; and the growth of the Open Access / Open Data movement.

UKRDS is a joint project between RLUK (a consortium of research libraries in the UK and Ireland), and RUGIT (the Russell Group IT Directors Group).

This paper is designed to encourage, inform and ultimately summarise the discussions around the appropriate strategic and technical descriptions of the Australian National Data Service; to fill in the outline in the Platforms for Collaboration investment plan.

Funding bodies increasingly require their grant-holders to produce and maintain Data Management Plans (DMPs), both at the bid-preparation stage and after funding has been secured. DMP Online has been developed by the Digital Curation Centre to enable you to build and edit DMPs according to the requirements stipulated by the major UK funders. The tool also contains helpful guidance and links for researchers and other data professionals.

The Data Asset Framework (formerly the Data Audit Framework) provides organisations with the means to identify, locate, describe and assess how they are managing their research data assets. DAF combines a set of methods with an online tool to enable data auditors to gather this information. DAF will help ensure that research data produced in UK Higher Education Institutions is preserved and remains accessible in the long term.

Reliable identification of researchers in the digital domain is becoming vitally important in contemporary science. The international IRISC2011 workshop, organized by GEN2PHEN, CSC and FIMM, will bring together key stakeholders and experts and help foster collaboration, coordination and awareness concerning identity in scientific research and communication

The tenth e-Science All Hands Meeting (AHM) will be held from 26th-29th September 2011, in the historic city of York, United Kingdom. The main themes will be shared infrastructures, using the cloud in research, end-user engagement, applications (e-science, e-social science, research in the arts and humanities). The conference will feature keynote presentations, workshop sessions, poster presentations and demonstrations. A series of tutorials for delegates will be held on Monday 26th September 2011, the first day of the conference. Papers will be peer reviewed and published in a special issue journal (to be confirmed). There will be a small exhibition area and opportunities for networking. The conference is expected to attract over 200 international delegates from industry and the academic community.