Project
Research Data Collections Project
Title
Email invitation to participate in research data interview
Version
1.0
Date effective
5 November 2010
Last updated
10 May 2011
Scope note
Contains text of email sent to researchers to invite them to
participate in a research data interview. It includes reasons
they may wish to showcase their data on Research Data
Australia and lists the topics to be covered in the interview.
Authorship
Research Data Collections Project Team
Contact
URL: http://www.researchdata.monash.edu/collections-project/
Email: researchdata@monash.edu
Licensing
This document is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Project
This project is supported by the Australian National Data
acknowledgement Service (ANDS) through the National Collaborative Research
Infrastructure Strategy Program and by Monash University
Library.
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Dear
The Australian Government recently established Research Data Australia, a national showcase for
research data collections (http://services.ands.org.au/home/orca/rda/).
Researchers from many Australian research organisations, including Monash University, have already
contributed information about 1,400 research data collections to this service.
The Library is inviting a selected group of researchers to participate in a project funded by the Australian
National Data Service (ANDS) to contribute details of more Monash University research datasets and
data collections to Research Data Australia.
name of subject librarian, your subject librarian, OR name of researcher suggested that we contact you to
find out if you are willing to share information about data collections from your publicly funded research.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Alternative paragraph 4: use when researcher has not been referred by librarian or researcher
Your research appears in a list of funded Monash projects and we are contacting you to find out if you are
willing to share information about data collections from your publicly funded research.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------This involves participating in an interview with Library staff in which we gather the information we need to
catalogue your data collection/s to the standards required to register your data with Research Data
Australia. You would have the opportunity to comment on the description of your data collection before it
is made available.
While many of the data collections registered with Research Data Australia are publicly accessible, you
do not need to provide open access to your data to participate in this project. Researchers only need to
provide sufficient information to enable others to identify relevant collections and contact the data owners
directly to negotiate terms and conditions for access.
Most interviews run for approximately 45 minutes and there is more information below on the kinds of
questions covered.
We are hoping that you can suggest a time that would suit you for us to come and talk to you about your
data collection/s and will telephone in a few days time.
We look forward to talking with you.
Many thanks
Jackie and Paula
Further information about the interview:
By the end of the interview we hope to have covered the following:
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The goals and outcomes of the project that generated the data
The people and organisations associated with the data – who owns the data, who collected or
created it, who is responsible for it in the longer term
The fields of research, time periods and places associated with the data
What the data collection contains – types of data, file formats or material types, number of items
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How the data was created or collected
The methods used to process or analyse the data, including any special hardware or software
How the data is currently stored
Any systems in place for identifying, structuring, classifying, coding or ‘tagging’ the data
Any documentation you generated during the life of a project that describes the research data
Any related publications, projects and data collections
How the data could be used in future by other researchers and other audiences, and whether it is
possible to make the data more accessible
Any terms and conditions that would be associated with providing access to the data, including
intellectual property/copyright, ethics and commercialisation requirements and any other special
requirements
Technical attributes of your data collections such as size of the collection and any special
software or hardware requirements.
Web: http://www.researchdata.monash.edu.au/collections-project
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