There are three advisory groups for the UKRDDS project and on 23 July they met online for the first time (see next blog post). The monthly online advisory group meetings are for participants to discuss progress, issues, method of working, communication, etc. for the UK Research Data Discovery Service.
The three advisory groups and their remit are as follows:
Technical and Metadata Group
This group has a combined remit to investigate and discuss technical and metadata issues, as follows:
- Looking at the service from a technical standpoint. Scope includes consideration of issues such as handling duplicates, deletions, choice of crosswalks for support, QA of crosswalks, and other relevant issues. Comprised of developers and architects within the project, plus developers from ANDS and CKAN and relevant technical experts in participating data centres and HEIs.
- Advising on the development of the metadata schema, including the necessary and desirable metadata elements to achieve discovery functionality and which conventions should be adopted when using these and other relevant issues. Comprised of metadata experts from within the project and relevant metadata experts in participating Data Centres and HEIs.
User Group
To ensure there is active engagement with the data contributors from HEIs and Data Centres throughout the project. This is to help gather user requirements, provide feedback on the project progress and deliverables, ask questions and share experience. This group includes those HEIs and Data Centres that are funded to support the project through sharing catalogues and submitting data. It should include research managers and other groups (e.g. data contributors). There is likely to be overlap between this group and others.
User (Researcher) Group
As the overall aim of the project is production of a service to provide improved discoverability of research data for reuse in research, it is critical that we provide a mechanism for researchers to interact with and feedback on the development of the service. This may be achieved by representative bodies and / or nomination of researchers by project partner institutions. Engaging with the UK research community will help ensure they are prepared for the Discovery Service and with international metadata development. This group includes those HEIs and Data Centres that are funded to support the project through sharing catalogues and submitting data. There is likely to be overlap between this group and others.
Meetings will occur online every 4 weeks, or as required. The next blog post will cover the discussions from the first meetings where the focus was on use cases.
