Researcher centred data repository workflows

Supporting the management of research data in universities
requires a range of services and components, including
a long-term vehicle for archiving and sharing data. Such data
repositories can serve multiple functions, and ensuring they
engage with researchers through appropriate workflows is a
key challenge. Data.uel, a new data repository at the University
of East London, seeks to provide workflows for four use cases
appropriate to institutions with a smaller research base.
It provides researcher-centred workflows for depositing
datasets, which can happen in advance of an overarching
description of a research project or following it. Accordingly,
the repository has a data model that permits the creation
of a record for a single or multiple assets, and for records
to be related to siblings as well as to parents. The data
may also be deposited before or after a related publication
is added to the publications repository (ROAR).
A separate data repository was created for two reasons:
to customise ingest to relate closely to scholarly workflows,
and to enable the addition of data that was not Open. We
know that not all data can or should be Open, so allow
researchers to make their data available in a choice of
three ways: Open Access, using open licensing; Available
on Request, where the data owner would approve
release case-by-case; and Closed to all but depositor and
administrator, where data has to be kept for compliance/
evidentiary reasons but is not suitable for sharing.