Digital Research Capability
Focus areas
The Digital Research Academic Convenorship (DRAC) has been working to raise awareness and knowledge of the digital infrastructure and services across all faculties at UoM.
We have been working on these four priorities:
Support
Establish a stronger support layer to demonstrate the potential of existing UoM supported platforms.
Who: Researchers
When: Prior to researchers undertaking research, encouraging them to use University infrastructure.
Cultural change
A shift to a data centric research culture. This is the culmination of a range of factors.
Who: Whole of University
When: At all stages.
Centralised resources
A central landing page for repository solutions for the University.
Who: Researchers
When: When identifying infrastructure and storage locations for data.
Research metadata
Improving the metadata captured with research projects – potentially through the Research Data Management Plan (DMP).
Who: Researchers
When: Prior to commencing a research project when researchers are filling in a DMP.
2023 focus on HASS digital research capability
We recognise there is current unevenness of service use and maturity across disciplines. To address this, we are undertaking a case study in HASS to build experience and further develop engagement strategies. We spent Q4 2022 to Q1 2023 in research and scoping, and implementing developed strategies throughout 2023.
While there is an initial focus on HASS, engagement in promoting awareness of digital infrastructure and services shall continue across all faculties.
Elements of the HASS case study
- Identify Digital and Data Resources for HASS and Indigenous researchers
- Develop an engagement strategy to maximise HASS researcher knowledge and utilisation of UoM Digital Infrastructure and Services
- Coordinate HASS and Indigenous academic input into digital resource planning
- Coordinate work in conjunction with the HASS taskforce via MDAP
- Identify, coordinate, and advocate for Melbourne’s engagement in state and national HASS and Indigenous Research Capability initiatives
- Align and operationalise the above within the Research Infrastructure Roadmap
- Use the strategies developed in this case study to promote digital knowledge and skills update across other disciplines and faculties
- Building on the HASS case study, work towards mechanisms to support responsibilities and data management under the University Research Data Management Policy (MPF1242). This shall have a focus on policy section 5.2(a) - ‘Where no ownership or responsibility has been recorded, or the recorded responsible party is no longer a University of Melbourne researcher, the relevant Dean or delegate will hold authority to decide on storage, retention, disposal, publication or licensing arrangements in compliance with legal and regulatory obligations.’
Resources
Tools and resources for digital research project management
We have developed central landing page for repository solutions for the University. The page sits on the Research Gateway, and groups tools by steps in the research lifecycle.
Access systems and tools for project management, contracts and grants, research outputs and publishing, your research profile, graduate research, using platforms, ethics, and research data management.
Systems and tools for digital research
Digital Research Capability: Data Management for UoM researchers
We have created a Digital Research Capability Padlet Portfolio to help digital researchers locate infrastructure and services at UoM.
The Padlet (a similar tool to Trello) includes links to tools and resources, walkthroughs, and examples of these tools and resources in use by academics across the University.
It is organised into themes matching different aspects of the researcher lifecycle, such as Data Stewardship, Data Storage and Management tools, and Open Research/Scholarship.
Researchers are encouraged to leave comments and post examples of your research if you're using any of these many awesome opportunities. We also use this as a familiarisation and engagement tool when doing research group visits and workshops.