Browsing by Author "Briney, Kristin"

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    Expanding the table: The role of library data professionals in data governance
    (2022-03-16) Goben, Abigail; Coates, Heather L.; Briney, Kristin
    As research data management and sharing has become ubiquitous, the need for data governance — coordinated decision-making around research data across all levels of an institution — has come to the forefront. Data governance is needed to address immediate and changing issues such as emerging funder policies as well as the ongoing challenge of researchers leaving an institution. Data governance often falls under the purview of information technology units. However, this technocentric approach may conflict with the values and real world aims of university research, resulting in policies and practices that create additional barriers. Due to the traditionally hierarchical nature of research institutions, there is a need for broader engagement and representation in governance structures. Currently, data governance typically reflects the priorities and perspectives of those who are white, able-bodied, and male. While this is evolving, there is a specific need to identify and include the communities who have been previously excluded from decision-making and to ensure their participation in order to anticipate potential governance problems across a range of scenarios. Due to their familiarity with working across disciplines and throughout their organizations and expertise in areas like data sharing and preservation, library data professionals should be key partners in data governance processes. At our institutions, each of us has observed common challenges and witnessed the need for more participatory data governance practices. Seeing these issues, as librarians working with data, we’ve raised our voices and used our established credibility to bring together the disparate groups and to ensure library expertise is utilized when policy and practice decisions are being made. This presentation will explore current challenges in research data governance stemming from the dominant technocentric approach. We seek to extend the conversation and to identify opportunities for our community to advance more transparent and collaborative data governance practices.
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    Shifting into Data Governance roles: Encounters of three data librarians
    (2022-06-10) Goben, Abigail; Coates, Heather L.; Briney, Kristin
    As research data management and sharing has become ubiquitous, the need for data governance — coordinated decision-making around research data across all levels of an institution — has come to the forefront. Data governance is needed to address immediate and changing issues such as emerging funder policies as well as the ongoing challenge of researchers leaving an institution. Data governance often falls under the purview of information technology units. However, this technocentric approach may conflict with the values and real world aims of university research, resulting in policies and practices that create additional barriers or disincentivize unconventional processes. Due to the traditionally hierarchical nature of research institutions, there is a need for broader engagement and representation in governance structures. Currently, data governance typically reflects the priorities and perspectives of those who are white, able-bodied, and male. While this is evolving, there is a specific need to identify and include the communities who have been previously excluded from decision-making and to ensure their participation in order to anticipate potential governance problems across a range of scenarios. Due to their familiarity with working across disciplines and throughout their organizations and expertise in areas like data sharing and preservation, library data professionals should be key partners in data governance processes. At our institutions, each of us has observed common challenges and witnessed the need for more participatory data governance practices. Seeing these issues, as librarians working with data, we’ve raised our voices and used our established credibility to bring together the disparate groups and to ensure library expertise is utilized when policy and practice decisions are being made. This presentation will describe how three data librarians have engaged with data governance and identified opportunities to advance more transparent and collaborative data governance practices.
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    The Library is Not Enough: Building the Data Governance Community at Your Institution
    (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2025) Goben, Abigail; Coates, Heather L.; Briney, Kristin
    While many Open Science initiatives are initiated by or hosted within academic libraries, managing data and open science practices requires the broad engagement of offices and departments across the institution. This engagement is often documented in data governance, which is “a system of decision rights and accountabilities for information-related processes, executed according to agreed-upon models which describe who can take what actions with what information, and when, under what circumstances, using what methods” (Data Governance Institute). While data governance may be established for administrative and institutional data, such as financial or student data, the evolving policy landscape and interests in open science have created new needs related to research data governance. While some universities have established these practices, many academic institutions are still beginning to develop or refine the guidance and support that researchers are requesting. Research data governance practices might include: creation and maintenance of data policies, developing infrastructure for data retention, establishing and refining data workflows, and ensuring that the institution meets legal, funder, and publisher obligations for open sharing. Academic librarians already provide leadership in Open Science by creating resources like institutional or data repositories, engaging in outreach and instruction with students and faculty, and fostering communities of practice across disciplines. They further bring awareness of the gaps between administrative needs, compliance requirements, and the goals of research teams. A next step for librarians is to participate in or direct data governance activities at their institution. In this recipe, we will prompt readers to identify the pantry of data governance activities present or absent at their institution and create a shopping list of goals. Some example activities might include: documenting data governance challenges present at their institution, identifying relevant policies at their institution, identify the stakeholders in those policies, identify the owners and processes for policy change/creation of standards or procedures, and engaging faculty and leaders in conversation about the policy and process gaps at their institution.
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    What if It Didn’t Happen: Data Management and Avoiding Research Misconduct
    (Lamar Soutter Library, UMass Chan Medical School, 2023) Coates, Heather; Goben, Abigail; Briney, Kristin; University Library
    As research misconduct has created reproducibility and researcher reputation concerns, there is an opportunity to recommend data management techniques to assist researchers as they seek to prevent these issues. Also central to the discussion are issues of power in the conduct of research, particularly in upholding the values of honesty and accountability. This commentary discusses how data professionals can engage in practical strategies to protect against allegations of misconduct.