FEATURE Data management
BETTER MANAGEMENT REDUCES DATA LOSS RISK
The impact of data loss can be staggering for research. Nathan Westgarth argues the case for better data management
T
he loss of scientific data can have a devastating impact on careers. After moving all his data home to write up, biologist Billy Hinchen returned one afternoon to find that his laptop and
all his back-up hard drives had been stolen. All that remained was a disparate collection of data, spread around numerous small flash drives, email attachments and scribbled drawings that were difficult to piece together once the main bulk of information had been lost.
The knock-on effect was disastrous. As Billy put it: ‘I was focussed on creating high-resolution, 3D time-lapse videos of developing crustacean embryos, so all of my work was digital-based. When I lost my laptop and backups, I lost 400GB of data and close to four years of work. As a direct result of this I ended up getting an MPhil rather than the PhD I’d been working towards. I was hoping to have an illustrious career in science and for a time it seemed like everything would be stopped in its tracks.’
The importance of data management
While this is an extreme case of data loss, it does highlight how important it is to consider how scientific data is managed. From the surveys and interviews we’ve held with the academic community, we’ve heard a common theme: researchers seem to have difficulty managing and accessing their data. Furthermore, it appears to be an ongoing problem for research scientists, at any stage of their careers.
Former PhD student and subsequent founder of the Figshare platform, Mark Hahnel, typified a common challenge: ‘During my PhD I was never good at managing my research data. I had so many different file names for my data that I always struggled to find the correct file quickly and easily when it was requested. My former PI was so horrified upon seeing the state of my data organisation that she held an emergency lab book meeting with the rest of my group when l was leaving’.
10 Research Information APRIL/MAY 2014
Research data management is becoming one of the most pressing issues facing the scientific community, not just for university management teams, but also for every individual
researcher. Our investigations
have revealed a concerning picture of the effect that poor data management is having on the quality and reliability of scientific outputs.
More data, more complexity The amount of research data being generated is currently increasing by 30 per cent annually[1]
. This data is not being effectively
managed, stored, and made easily accessible. One study found that the odds of sourcing datasets decline by 17 per cent each year and that a huge 80 per cent of scientific data is lost within two decades[2]
.
The information that remains is often poorly reported. In a second review, researchers found that 54 per cent of the resources used to perform experiments across 238 published studies could not be identified, making verification impossible[3]
. This means
that much of the $1.5 trillion per year estimated total global spend on research and development is wasted[4]
. @researchinfo
www.researchinformation.info
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