Author Archives: Carly Strasser

We are Hiring a DMPTool Manager!

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Do you love all things data management as much as we do? Then join our team! We are hiring a person to help manage the DMPTool, including development prioritization, promotion, outreach, and education. The position is funded for two years with the potential for an extension pending funding and budgets. You would be based in the amazing city of Oakland CA, home of the California Digital Library. Read more at jobs.ucop.edu or download the PDF description: Data Management Product Manager (4116).

Job Duties

Product Management (30%): Ensure the DMPTool remains a viable and relevant application. Update funder requirements, maintain the integrity of publicly available DMPs, contact partner institutions to report issues, and review DMPTool guidance and content for currency. Evaluates and presents new technologies and industry trends. Recommends those that are applicable to current products or services and the organization’s long-range, strategic plans. Identifies, organizes, and participates in technical discussions with key advisory groups and other customers/clients. Identifies additional opportunities for value added product/service delivery based on customer/client interaction and feedback.

Marketing and Ourtreach (20%): Develop and implement strategies for promoting the DMPTool. Create marketing materials, update website content, contacting institutions, and present at workshops and/or conferences. Develops and participates in marketing and professional outreach activities and informational campaigns to raise awareness of product or service including communicating developments and updates to the community via social media. This includes maintaining the DMPTool blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts, GitHub Issues, and listservs.

Project Management (30%): Develops project plans including goals, deliverables, resources, budget and timelines for enhancements of the DMPTool. Acting as product/service liaison across the organization, external agencies and customers to ensure effective production, delivery and operation of the DMPTool.

Strategic Planning (10%): Assist in strategic planning, prioritizing and guiding future development of the DMPTool. Pursue outside collaborations and funding opportunities for future DMPTool development including developing an engaged community of DMPTool users (researchers) and software developers to contribute to the codebase. Foster and engage open source community for future maintenance and enhancement.

Reporting (10%): Provides periodic content progress reports outlining key activities and progress toward achieving overall goals. Develops and reports on metrics/key performance indicators and provides corresponding analysis.

To apply, visit jobs.ucop.edu (Requisition No. 20140735)

From Flickr by Brenda Gottsabend

From Flickr by Brenda Gottsabend

Got an idea for DMPTool? Share it!

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There’s always room for improvement, and that’s certainly the case with the DMPTool. Do you have a suggestion on how to make it better? Or did you discover a bug while customizing the tool for your campus? We want to hear from you! Submit your suggestions for enhancements or bugs you’ve found using our GitHub Issue Tracker.

Got ideas? We're listening! From artofhearing.com

Got ideas? We’re listening! From artofhearing.com

 

We need API use cases!

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The Egyptian god Apis, a bull deity who served as an intermediary between humans and God. From Flickr by Jan.

We need your help! We are beginning work on developing the DMPTool API (application programming interface) and need use cases. If you aren’t familiar with APIs (, I’ve attached a few slides to help explain the concept. But basically, it’s how you can get information INTO or OUT OF the DMPTool. Readwrite.com has a great description:
In the simplest terms, APIs are sets of requirements that govern how one application can talk to another. APIs aren’t at all new; whenever you use a desktop or laptop, APIs are what make it possible to move information between programs—for instance, by cutting and pasting a snippet of a LibreOffice document into an Excel spreadsheet. System-level APIs makes it possible for applications like LibreOffice to run on top of an OS like Windows in the first place.
So what information do you want from the DMPTool? Or what do you want it to provide to other applications? You can comment on this post, email us, or add your suggestion directly to the GitHub issue tracker with the “API use cases” tag.

Examples:

  • You want the number of people who have completed plans for each of the different funders at your institution.
  • You want to download all of the templates that admins at your institution have created.
  • You want the DMPTool to directly deposit a copy of a plan into your institutional repository.
  • ???

Misc Stats for DMPTool2

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It’s been nearly a month since we released DMPTool2, and by all accounts the new version of the application is a success. We have a few bugs to work out but generally the response to the tool has been positive. If you have feature requests or bugs to report, please visit our GitHub Issues page. Below are a few usage statistics for the tool that Perry Willett pulled together:

Number of plans & users for last 12 months

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Cummulative plans & users since Oct 2011

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Want to make some graphs of your own? Here are the data.

Contributing organizations

There are now 117 participating institutions that have either configured their campus single-signon or customized the DMPTool for their users. There are participating organizations in 41 states and the District of Columbia; California leads all states with 20 participating organizations. A map of all participating organizations is available here.

New DMPTool Released Today

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The long-awaited DMPTool version 2 is released today, thanks to the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Currently the DMPTool supports 115 institutions and more than 9100 users, and with this release we expect these numbers to grow rapidly. The new DMPTool is chock-full of new stuff, including:

For everyone

For institution administrators

Get started promoting the new DMPTool! Use these resources

All are available at http://dmptool.org/promote

San Francisco New Year Fireworks 2013, by David Yu. From Flickr.

San Francisco New Year Fireworks 2013, by David Yu. From Flickr.

Hang A DMPTool Poster!

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In addition to working hard on the new version of the DMPTool (to be released in May), we are also working on outreach and education materials that promote the use of the DMPTool. Our latest addition to these materials is a generic poster about the DMPTool, including information about what’s to come in the new version. You can download a PDF version, or a PPTX version that you can customize for your institution. We plan on updating this poster when the new version of the DMPTool is released, so keep an eye out!

“DMPTool: Expert Resources & Support for Data Management Planning”. 30″x38″ poster

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Posters available as:

  • PDF (cannot be customized)
  • PPTX (can be customized)

What are your burning questions about the DMPTool?

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We are currently developing content for the new DMPTool site, to be launched early 2014 alongside the DMPTool Version 2. One of the components of the new website is a section of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). We want to be thorough – what questions do you have for us to answer? Comment on this blog, tweet us (@TheDMPTool), or email us (uc3@ucop.edu) with your suggestions.

Our current list of questions:

  1. How do I get to the DMPTool?
  2. What’s the purpose of the DMPTool?
  3. What can I do with theDMPTool?
  4. Who can create a data management plan using the DMPTool?
  5. How do I get to the DMPTool?
  6. What’s the purpose of the DMPTool?
  7. What can I do with theDMPTool?
  8. Who can create a data management plan using the DMPTool?
  9. Is use of the DMPTool free?
  10. Who owns the data management plans created with the DMPTool?
  11. Who created the DMPTool? Who owns it?
  12. My institution isn’t a “partner”. How can I make that happen?
  13. What does it mean to be a partner institution?
  14. What are the terms of use for the DMPTool?
  15. What is the privacy policy for the DMPTool?
  16. How do I sign up for the DMPTool?
  17. Can I get a PDF of the help text and resources without logging in?
  18. Where can I read more about funder requirements for DMPs?
  19. Who can help me at my institution?
  20. What does it mean to share my plan publicly?
  21. Are there examples of data management plans somewhere?
  22. I have a collaborator. How can we work on the same plan?
  23. What does it mean to have a plan “reviewed”? Who reviews it?
  24. How long will you save my plans?
  25. What if I move to a new institution?
  26. Will you share my information with anyone?
  27. Has [the funder] endorsed the use of the DMPTool?
  28. Does the DMPTool have the most up-to-date requirements?
  29. I’m a librarian. What are the benefits of becoming a DMPTool partner?
  30. How do I configure the DMPTool to work with Shibboleth?

Report on DMPTool at ESA 2013

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Last week in Minneapolis, about 4,000 ecologists got together to geek out and enjoy the midwest for eight days. The DMPTool had a couple of appearances in the course of this 2013 Ecological Society of America Meeting– a workshop on managing ecological data and a session on data management planning and the DMPTool. It was also mentioned in numerous presentations about the DataONE Investigator Toolkit, of which the DMPTool is a part.

Here I want to briefly mention the special session on the DMPTool, which occurred on the first official day of #ESA2013. The session was 75 minutes long, and Bill Michener of DataONE and I were sharing the podium. He planned to introduce DMPs generally, followed by my explanation and demonstration of the DMPTool, including the new version of the tool due out in Winter 2013-2014.

Fifteen minutes before the presentations were due to start, the room was packed. Attendees were sitting on the floor in the aisles by 5 minutes before, and there was a nonstop trickle of attendees entering throughout the 75 minute session. The catch? We had no power.

That’s right: Bill and I were forced to talk about data management plans, demo the DMPTool, and discuss future plans to a packed room, all without a microphone, a projector, or even a chalk board. We managed to get through the session, and folks seemed to appreciate the impromptu soliloquies on data management by myself and Bill. The power came on about 5 minutes before the close of the session (of course), at which point I scurried behind the podium to show screen shots of the DMPTool. By the time I looked up from my laptop, about 60% of the audience had left. Apparently slides were not the big draw for our session.

My takeaway lessons? When giving a talk, be prepared for anything; people enjoy the element of surprise and improvisation; and researchers are dying to learn about DMPs, regardless of the potential hurdles put before them. This is most likely due to funder requirements for DMPs, but I’d like to think it also relates to my and Bill’s dulcet tones.

The slides I didn’t get to show are available on slideshare.

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