Positions available: DMPTool software engineer

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As part of the project funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we’re hiring two software engineers for a one-year development project to enhance the DMPTool, to be based at the California Digital Library office in Oakland CA. A full job description is available at the UC Office of the President Job Search Site.

The DMPTool is a widely used service that supports researchers in creating data management plans as required by various governmental and private funding agencies. The development project will augment the existing tool with a number of new functions and features. Reporting to the DMPTool project manager, the incumbent will be responsible for refining functional requirements, UI designs, and technical specifications; implementation of those specifications; testing and documenting the resulting codebase; and deployment of the operational system in a production environment. UC3 employs an agile development methodology relying on iterative code prototyping, assessment, and refinement.

The DMPTool is a Ruby on Rails web application with a MySQL backend database and is integrated with LDAP- and Shibbolith-based authentication. It is deployed in a SLES/SUSE Linux VM environment. Candidates will have demonstrated experience and expertise in these and related web technologies, as well as in general software development methodologies and best practices.

The UC Curation Center at the California Digital Library (CDL), an administrative unit of the UC Office of the President (UCOP). UC3, one of the world’s premier digital curation programs, is a creative partnership between the CDL, the ten UC campuses, and the international curation community, providing innovative services and solutions to ensure the long-term usability of the University’s digital content.

More information is available at the UCOP Job Search Site. The closing date for this position announcement is Feb 14, 2013.

DMPTool Partners Awarded Funding for Enhancement

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We are pleased to announce that DMPTool partners were awarded a $590,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to fund further development of the DMPTool.  The grant will be used to fund improvements to the DMPTool including expanded functionality, training modules, documentation and the creation of an open-source community to sustain the DMPTool in the future.

Project partners are the UC Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library, the University of Virginia Library, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, and DataONE. The grant activity will occur in 2013.

Datasets are the currency of scientific and intellectual advancement. Despite this reality, most researchers are not aware of how best to manage their data. The DMPTool, launched in October 2011, is a freely available web application that addresses this need by guiding users through the process of creating a data management plan for a range of funders.

The current version of the DMPTool provides an easy to use interface that:

  • Helps users create data management plans for specific funding agencies
  • Provides step-by-step instructions and guidance for how to manage data
  • Provides information about resources and services available to researchers to help fulfill data management requirements.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funding will support a second version, DMPTool2, that will:

  • Promote the practice of data management, sharing, and preservation, emphasizing the utility of best practices beyond meeting funder requirements
  • Enable institutions to easily shape and exploit the DMPTool to meet local need
  • Foster the emergence of an engaged open source community of DMPTool users and developers
  • Maintain transparency in all project activities to facilitate community involvement
  • Increase the depth and breadth of the tool’s coverage for funder and institutional data management requirements
  • Enable collaboration and connect stakeholders to each other and institutional resources, including services, expertise and guidance
  • Provide support for the full data management life cycle, including provision for collaborative plan authorship, and review and reporting by institutional administrators

For questions about the DMPTool or DMPTool2, contact Service Manager Perry Willett at perry.willett@ucop.edu.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grant-making institution based in New York City. Established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation, the Foundation makes grants in support of original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and economic performance: www.sloan.org

Download of PDF of this press release: DMPT2_PressRelease_2013-01-14

DMPTool unavailable for several hours, Saturday Jan 12 and Sunday Jan 13

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Due to system maintenance, the DMPTool will be unavailable for periods on Saturday January 12 2013 and Sunday January 13 2013.

  • Saturday January 12 2013, 10:00am to 2:00pm PST (18:00 to 22:00 UTC)
  • Sunday January 13, 2013, 1:00pm to 4:00pm PST (21:00 to 23:59 UTC)

During this time, the website will be unavailable and access to data management plans will be blocked.

This maintenance window is necessary to upgrade core infrastructure in the California Digital Library’s production data center. It is possible that service to the DMPTool will be restored before the scheduled end of the outage, but this cannot be guaranteed.

Please contact us at uc3@ucop.edu with any questions or concerns. We apologize for the inconvenience.

New article in International Journal of Digital Curation

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The DMPTool and DMPOnline teams are pleased to announce a new article outlining the visions, strategies, and future developments for the respective projects.  Access it here:  http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/225

Citation:   Sallans, A., Donnelly, M. (2012). DMP Online and DMPTool: Different Strategies Towards a Shared Goal. International Journal of Digital Curation, 7(2), 123–129.

Abstract:

This paper provides a comparative discussion of the strategies employed in the UK’s DMP Online tool and the US’s DMPTool, both designed to provide a structured environment for research data management planning (DMP) with explicit links to funder requirements. Following the Sixth International Digital Curation Conference, held in Chicago in December 2010, a number of US institutions partnered with the Digital Curation Centre’s DMP Online team to learn from their experiences while developing a US counterpart. DMPTool arrived in beta in August 2011 and released a production version in November 2011. This joint paper will compare and contrast use cases, organizational and national/cultural characteristics that have influenced the development decisions, outcomes achieved so far, and planned future developments.

 

 

 

DMPTool Demo at AGU 2012

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If you are headed to the AGU meeting next week, consider attending the “Data Management 101 for the Early Career Scientist” workshop being run by ESIP. In addition to getting lots of great information on how best to manage your data, Amber Budden from DataONE will be demoing the DMPTool.

When: Tuesday December 4th, 12:20-1:40 PM
Where: Marriott Marquis, Salons 5-6, San Francisco

Abstract:
Don’t let the changing face of science leave you behind. The proliferation of data from all sources requires today’s scientists to be knowledgeable about sound data management practices. In this free workshop, everything the modern data-producing scientist needs to know about data management will be introduced. We will discuss the rationale for data management, provide an overview for managing science data and demonstrate use of two popular data management planning tools from IEDA and DataONE. This workshop is open to all AGU attendees. Students and early careers scientists are especially encouraged to attend. For details on the outline and for links to all of our Data Management Short Course modules see: http://esipfed.org/AGUDataManagement101

New funder: Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative

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The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) studies the effects of oil and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico, and offers research grants to scientists to study the environmental impacts and public health implications of petroleum pollution. As part of these grants, GoMRI requires researchers to provide data management plans. The DMPTool now supports GoMRI’s data management requirements–you’ll see the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative included in the dropdown list of funders when you log in. As part of this initiative, GoMRI is creating a research database where scientists can deposit their data, called the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC). As they state:

Scientists and researchers of GoMRI are encouraged to submit their data onto recognized national data centers. However, if one cannot be identified, GRIIDC will host these data for long-term archival and to facilitate data discovery.

They will also provide other services, such as generating DOIs and maintaining a data registry.

DMPTool monthly report, Oct 2012

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Use stats

October was our biggest month ever. 375 new users logged into the DMPTool in October, and 336 plans were created. There is now a total of 3,466 users, and they’ve created almost 3,000 plans total. 2 more universities customized the DMPTool for their researchers, bringing the total to 28. 65 have configured their campus single-signon for the DMPTool. See the map of our participating organizations: http://bit.ly/L85sKj

As the graph at the bottom shows, more DMPs are created for these funders:

  • NIH
  • NSF Biological Sciences directorate
  • NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences

Here’s a graph of overall use through Oct 2012:

Also, here’s a graph of use by funder through Oct 2012:

NSF will consider research data as important as publications

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The NSF has released a new Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG), effective January 14, 2013. This guide includes updates to the Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) as well as the Award and Administration Guide (AAG).

Among the various changes is a significant change is to the Biographical Sketches portion of the proposal. No longer are researchers asked to list just their “relevant publications.” After January, researchers will be requested to list their “relevant products.” To quote the new guide:

Chapter II.C.2.f(i)(c), Biographical Sketch(es), has been revised to rename the “Publications” section to “Products” and amend terminology and instructions accordingly. This change makes clear that products may include, but are not limited to, publications, data sets, software, patents, and copyrights.

As Carly Strasser points out, this is “great news for those of us trying to get data the recognition it deserves.” Sherry Lake at the University of Virginia, and resident requirements analyst here at the DMPTool, has examined the new requirements and determined that no changes will be needed to the DMPTool. Any data management plan that you create using the DMPTool today will meet these new NSF requirements. We are working to stay abreast of developments in the rapidly changing area of data management and US federal agencies.

DMPTool monthly report, Sept 2012

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News

There was a service outage on September 19-20. The DMPTool service was unavailable from approximately 6:30pm on Sept 19 until 9am on Sept 20. Among other problems, we did not have adequate monitoring in place so that the data center staff was unaware of the problem. We have corrected this problem and now have 24/7 monitoring in place.

Use stats

We continue to add users—250 new users logged into the DMPTool in September. There is now a total of almost 3100 users, and they’ve created 2,645 plans total. 3 more universities customized the DMPTool for their researchers, bringing the total to 26. Over 60 have configured their campus single-signon for the DMPTool. See the map of our participating organizations: http://bit.ly/L85sKj

Here’s a graph of overall use through Sept 2012:

New publication

Starr, Joan; Willett, Perry; Federer, Lisa; Horning, Claudia; and Bergstrom, Mary Linn (2012) “A Collaborative Framework for Data Management Services: The Experience of the University of California,” Journal of eScience Librarianship: Vol. 1: Iss. 2, Article 7. doi:10.7191/jeslib.2012.1014
Available at: http://escholarship.umassmed.edu/jeslib/vol1/iss2/7

This article describes the full suite of services provided by CDL (including the DMPTool) in the context of the research data lifecycle.