As part of our ongoing outreach efforts, the Research Data Management Core (RDMC) recently provided presentations during the Joint Meeting of the General Faculty and Faculty Council as well as the recent Office of Sponsored Programs’ Research Administration Forum & Training (RAFT) session.
Joint Meeting of the General Faculty and Faculty Council
Jonathan Crabtree, the Director of the Research Data Management Core, presented on the history of data management and the development of RDMC in response to increasing data sharing requirements by federal funding agencies. His presentation also highlighted the Research Data Management Core’s role at UNC, the support offered to researchers, and UNC Research’s commitment to data management and sharing.
The agenda, presentation slides, and a recording of the session can be accessed here.
Office of Sponsored Programs’ Research Administration Forum & Training (RAFT)
The Office of Sponsored Programs recently hosted a RAFT session with presentations from Jonathan Crabtree (RDMC) addressing the role of RDMC at UNC and with Amanda Chang (OSP) to discuss the new data management service fee and its implementation. A Q&A discussion followed after the presentations.
The agenda, presentation slides, and recording for the session can be accessed here under Winter 2024. (Note: OSP will share the recording of the session as soon as it is available.)
From Jonathan Crabtree, Director — UNC Research Data Management Core
We have been made aware that the information regarding data management and sharing plan (DMSP) audits and review on our site was unclear. To address this, we have updated the language on the website to better explain DMSP requirements and RDMC services.
Currently there are no mandatory requirements for data management and sharing plans to be reviewed in advance by RDMC. As required by funders, investigators will be asked during the RAMSeS submission process to upload their data management and sharing plans. These plans can potentially be selected for audit by the RDMC based on unique characteristics identified during the upload questionnaire. These audits are geared toward preventing major compliance issues. There is no requirement that data management and sharing plans be reviewed in advance by RDMC or prepared using the DMPTool.
The RDMC does offer an optional data management and sharing plan detailed review and design consultation service geared toward helping investigators prepare competitive plans that will be reviewed well by the funders. We highly encourage the use of this service but understanding potential time constraints, they are not required. A full review does take extra time as well as the ability to share the suggested edits online. This is especially the case as we are just now beginning the hiring process and have limited resources.
The RDMC is here to help investigators create fundable proposals with compliant data management and sharing plans. Our staff is here to help lower this burden and assist when needed. In cases where our detailed review services are not needed, we will be here for questions and will provide audit overviews of submission. This is to help understand resources required by investigators to maintain compliance as well as increase our success rate on proposal submissions.
Several months ago, we announced a new initiative to address research data management needs across the University with the establishment of a new Research Data Management Core (RDMC). We are now pleased to provide the following exciting announcements on the RDMC’s progress: the appointment of Jonathan Crabtree as the core’s inaugural director, the rollout of the RDMC website, an update to RDMC service support, and fee information.
RDMC Inaugural Director
Reporting to Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Andy Johns, Crabtree will shepherd the RDMC into existence, drawing on several decades of data archival systems experience directing the Odum Institute’s Research Data Information Systems group.
Crabtree has worked at UNC-Chapel Hill for more than 30 years. During his time at the Odum Institute, he helped to establish a highly skilled team of developers and support staff responsible for building and maintaining data archival systems for social science research data, including the UNC Dataverse, which is now being used by researchers across the University and beyond. He was also involved in establishing the Global Dataverse Community Consortium, an organization that supports archives built on the Dataverse Project worldwide. He is the current chair of the CoreTrustSeal board, an international body providing certification and review for data repositories based on the Core Trustworthy Data Repositories Requirements.
Crabtree has an undergraduate degree in economics and master’s and doctorate degrees from the UNC School of Information and Library Science, focusing on trusted digital repositories.
RDMC Website
The new RDMC website is now live and includes guidance on getting started with research data management, planning for the data that will result from a grant-funded project, and navigating the parts of the pre-award process that pertain to research data management, including budgeting.
In addition to this guidance, the RDMC site maintains a knowledge base related to concepts, procedures, and other information related to research data management. There is also a service portal that makes it easy to request help or consultation with a member of the RDMC staff. Soon, several other applications currently under development will be made available to aid in understanding data management best practices and planning for data management throughout the lifecycle of a project. These will include a repository finder and a set of interactive tools that walk investigators through the research data lifecycle.
Effective December 1, you may notice as you log into RAMSeS that there is a new screen in the internal processing form (IPF) to collect information about the research data projected to result from funded research programs. This upgrade to RAMSeS will enable the RDMC, Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), School of Medicine’s Sponsored Programs Office (SOMSPO) and others within UNC Research administration to better understand data management needs across campus and implement the plans that are increasingly being required for inclusion with grant applications by funder mandate.
For help with any part of filling in the requested information in the IPF while planning grants, please visit the RDMC website for guidance. You may also request support in the RDMC service portal by clicking on the “Need Help?” button at the top of the page.
RDMC Fee
Beginning November 2023, a new data management fee will be applied to most funded research projects, regardless of sponsor, to fund the critical infrastructure required to support research data management needs for the University. Specialized projects and projects with very large-scale data may require additional and tailored support that can be borne as direct costs on a project-by-project basis. A full listing of services covered by the RDMC fee is available on the RDMC website.
The new RDMC fee (expensed on account 559011) will apply to monthly modified total direct cost (MTDC) expenditures at 0.38%. The RDMC fee will be allocated to projects as part of month-end ConnectCarolina processes and should reflect on project financials by the first week of the following month. We encourage all research teams to continue budgeting for the RDMC fee during the pre-award process and follow guidance from OSP and SOMSPO. Please join us in welcoming Jonathan Crabtree and the Research Data Management Core to the UNC Research family. Together, we look forward to managing our data resources to the maximum benefit for the UNC community and the society we serve.
Data are a critical asset that are the foundation of most scholarly outputs. Federal and non-federal sponsors have become increasingly focused on ensuring that all universities and principal investigators become stewards of research data resulting from funded projects. In a policy that took effect in January 2023, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) states that ‘Responsible data management and sharing has many benefits, including accelerating the pace of biomedical research, enabling validation of research results, and providing accessibility to high-value datasets. Some sponsors have recently begun to require data management and sharing (DMS) plans as part of competitive proposals, and other sponsors have announced plans to implement similar policies soon. Sponsors like NIH have stated that these DMS plans will be considered as part of the proposal review process and may impact whether a project is funded or not.
These new policies represent a significant challenge requiring institutions to quickly design and implement support resources for faculty to comply. The infrastructure and efforts required to perform these tasks represent real costs that the existing Federal indirect cost model does not recognize. Fortunately, to ensure that new requirements don’t represent unfunded mandates, the NIH has permitted individual project budgets to include costs related to data management and sharing. While it is helpful that sponsors recognize the need for dedicated budget for these activities, it is essential for us to be strategic in our implementation of support infrastructure to ensure that it will scale to serve the needs of our research enterprise, but also serve the data management and sharing needs of individual projects long after those projects have ended. Thus, there is a need for more comprehensive and coordinated data management support than has been previously available to achieve these goals and for which support at the institutional level can be provided at an economy of scale.
Currently, Carolina has many resources to support research data-related activities, but the landscape may seem confusing for research teams who are often left trying to figure how to navigate these resources. To help coordinate UNC’s efforts on research data management and sharing and to ensure the University remains compliant with these new requirements, we are launching a new Research Data Management Core.
The Core will support research data management for the entire campus community and will closely coordinate with existing resources across the UNC community to develop a campus-wide research data ecosystem. This new Core will also directly provide data services and solutions to help lower the burden of existing and future data management and sharing policies, and will also serve as a ‘switchboard’ for faculty, staff and students who may have research data-related questions. The Core will support researchers with services throughout the research lifecycle. These services will begin with assistance in developing compliant DMS plans during the proposal submission process and continue throughout the funded project by coordinating with research teams to ensure DMS plan compliance. By infusing domain expert knowledge with curation best practices, we will empower researchers’ data enabling those data to be shared creating new research partnerships and opportunities.
To leverage economies of scale and to ensure adequate support for this new Core, a new data management fee will be applied to most funded research projects beginning in November 2023. This fee will apply to monthly modified total direct cost (MTDC) expenditures and will initially be 0.38%. The fee will be evaluated annually to determine if minor adjustments are necessary. Services provided to all UNC campus projects through the Core fee will include data deposit of up to 2TB per project; long-term preservation and storage of shared data; access to tools and platforms administered by the Core to support data management across the research lifecycle from planning to collection to analysis to archiving and sharing; training and resources for project teams; and a network of data stewards and domain experts working and consulting directly with projects. Specialized projects and projects with very large-scale data may require additional and tailored support that can be borne as direct costs on a project-by-project basis. A full listing of services covered by the Core fee will be available via the Research Data Management Core website, which will be launched this Fall.
This approach will ensure a coordinated approach for our campus and will likely lower the overall costs to individual projects. Further, this model will enable the University to ensure support and compliance for projects long after individual project funding has ended. The advantages of a coordinated effort to identify, describe, preserve, and share these valuable resources will outweigh the actual cost. Increasing the visibility of our research outputs will certainly lead to new partnerships and collaborations that will generate new discoveries and solutions to problems facing North Carolina and the world. Together we will manage our data resources to the maximum benefit for the UNC community and the society we serve.
