PRESENTED BY

Consultation: Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Data Commons

February 2020, Canberra

Alexis Tindall, Senior Research Data Specialist

Ian Duncan, Director, eResearch Infrastructure & Services

Max Wilkinson, Research Data Infrastructure Architect

• Exploring consultation findings

• Consider the focus areas that have arisen from

consultation and inform proposals

• Consider the benefits of a HASS Research Data

Commons and the pathways to delivering the

Commons

• Discuss related issues

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Today’s consultation:

ARDC – The Australian Research Data Commons

The ARDC is a transformational, sector-wide initiative, working with sector, government, and industry partners to build a coherent national and collaborative research data commons. This will deliver a world-leading data advantage, facilitate innovation, foster collaboration and enhance research translation.

• 2016 National Research Infrastructure

Roadmap called for Platforms for Humanities,

Arts and Social Sciences

• 2019, announcement of the National Research

Infrastructure Scoping Study

• Consultation: Related work from the Australian

Academy of Humanities looking at

international exemplars

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Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Data Commons: Background

• Overview of the HASS data landscape

• HASS research communities, activities, needs,

priorities, opportunities

• Relevant activities that can be leveraged or

enhanced

• Consider interoperability, national significance,

national vs institutional responsibilities

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Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Data Commons: Brief of work

Bring together data and related resources to enable researchers to conduct and collaborate on world-class data intensive research.

• Access to data, methods of sharing

• Analytical tools and working environments

• Computing resources, storage and other support

• Sharing methods and models, training, skill and community building

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What is a research data commons?

• Consultation

• Research communities (ANZSRC FOR 12 through 22)

• Data providers

• Related initiatives

• DDeRP partners and Learned Academies

• Input from the ARDC Platforms Program

• Group consultations

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Consultation

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Research communities:

• Diversity of discipline, diversity of readiness

• Useful methods of clustering activities and priorities?

• Methods and tools/ data types (quantitative, qualitative, text, images, machine data)/ data

source

• Multiple stakeholders – stakeholder communities, public,

Data landscape:

• De facto national infrastructure, sustainability concerns

• GLAM digitization

• Institutional collections

• Lost collections and collections at risk, culture of data sharing

• Indigenous data governance

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Current state

Data and services• Access to data, large and small

• Preservation, including rescuing lost or at risk data

• Metadata vs data level access

• Data linkage

• Ethics, sensitive data

Software and platforms• Collaboration environments

• Aggregation facilities

• Collaboration with eResearch support or cross-disciplinary

collaboration

Storage and compute• Scaling up data access and use

• Practical methods of aggregation

• Robust models of mediated access

• Sharing new digital methods

People and Policy• Skills and digital research methods

• Culture of sharing

• Indigenous data governance

• Mediated data access

• Rewarding digital excellence and championing research

data culture

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Emerging challenges:

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Opportunities:

• High interest in sharing Australian Government data

• Projects: • Funded infrastructure (including new LIEF projects)• ARDC Platforms• Related national collections (including emerging big data)

• Data sharing requirements of funding council

• Community initiatives

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1. Aggregation of and access to existing data

2. Improved analysis environments for aggregated data

3. Data linkage for improved outcomes

4. Secure linkage and analysis environments

5. Indigenous Data governance

6. HASS sector communication and collaboration

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Focus areas:

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Highly skilled digital humanities and social sciences researchers working

in multidisciplinary teams, using and contributing to best digital methods

to generate new insights into society, culture and the past while

providing reliable and effective forecasting on social issues, strategies and

the future.

Efficiency and innovation aided through integration of data and

computing services, while large datasets will inspire and benefit from

new modes of analysis, including technologies such as machine learning,

attract communities of innovative leading researchers and train a

pipeline of emerging researchers.

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Ideal future state

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• Multi-year pathway to realizing the Research Data

Commons

• Recommend targeted opportunities that will demonstrate

impact in the short term, informing further development

in the longer term

• Invest in communities and institutions showing an

advanced state of readiness, benefits include:

• Build foundations that can be extended to other communities

• Inspire other communities to prepare

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How do we get there?

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Theme 1: DataObjective: Improved access to more high-quality data: particularly Government data and data sourced from the Galleries,

Libraries, Archive and Museums sector

Benefits:

• Make extant data as useful as possible

• Enable efficient and effective researcher access to increasingly available government data

• Prove the value of researcher access to GLAM collections at scale

• Enable new international links for Australian GLAM collections and associated HASS research

Activities: Activities described under this theme include leveraging existing initiatives that are improving access to

government data and investment in research platforms for GLAM collections demonstrating advanced state of readiness to

provide researcher specific services.

Focus Areas Addressed:

• Aggregation of and access to existing data

• Data linkage for improved outcomes

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Theme 2: Platforms

Objective: Demonstrate uplift in research practices and outputs through investment in collections, tailored interfaces and

analysis tools.

Benefits:

• Model and test options for improved access to research collections and salvage of collections at risk, data linkage and

integration with improved analysis environments.

• Leverage and enhance existing social sciences research infrastructure for improved outcomes through increase in scale.

Activities: Activities described under this theme include development of a model research data commons, working with a

community that exemplifies challenges and opportunities common to many HASS communities, as demonstrated through

consultation, measures that will aid integration of existing research infrastructure and exploration of a framework for

environments focused on the analysis of sensitive data.

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Focus Areas Addressed:• Aggregation of and access to existing data• Improved analysis environments for aggregated data

• Data linkage for improved outcomes• Secure linkage and analysis environment

Theme 3: Data governance, sovereignty and linkageObjective: Focus on challenges that are particular and characteristic of HASS research data, with an interest in ethics and

responsible development of data rich environments.

Benefits:

• Inform and complement other elements of this proposal

• Develop, test and implement practical responses to key challenges in data-enabled HASS research

Activities: Activities described under this theme will advance implementation of Indigenous data governance and contribute

to efforts for increased data linkage.

Focus Areas Addressed:

• Improved analysis environments for aggregated data

• Data linkage for improved outcomes

• Secure linkage and analysis environments

• Indigenous Data governance

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Theme 4: Community communication & collaborationObjective: Developing strong, well-connected and collaborative HASS research communities, with an emphasis on

communities and groups which are engaged in national or potentially national resource development and/or use.

Benefits:

• identification of potential shared services and resources such as:

• sharing and developing best-practices including

• initiating new collaborations

Activities: Activities under this theme will support community governance, collaboration and communication around the

suite of activities.

Focus Areas Addressed:

• HASS sector communication and collaboration

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Alexis Tindall

Senior Research Data Specialist

alexis.tindall@ardc.edu.au