Nov 26th 2012, 12 noon PST

Attending: Amber, Matt, Viv, Bill

Agenda
Breakdown of workshops / sessions
Responsible parties

Special Session:
Are you preparing a research proposal or initiating a research project?
Increasingly, funders are requiring that proposals and funded projects include
a comprehensive plan that describes how the data will be effectively managed
during the life of the project and beyond. Regardless, advance planning for data
management is good practice; stewardship of earth depends on stewardship of
the data about earth and life on it. This workshop introduces participants to the
critical components of effective data management plans, with consideration of
the ways in which your plan can be tailored to the size, duration, and breadth of
your project. Participants will work with a Data Management Plan Template that
can be easily adapted to meet individual needs as well as a series of examples that
span the breadth of ecological research projects. The session is designed to be
highly interactive and includes brief talks, videos, and panel/audience feedback.
Speakers will highlight an array of online resources that point to exemplary plans,
best data practices for all phases of the data life cycle (e.g., data acquisition, quality
assurance/quality control, data exploration, analysis, visualization, preservation,
and sharing), and additional instructional materials and resources that will enable
participants in developing their own data management plans.

Workshop 1: Data management:
Although graduate students in Ecology learn about methods for collecting
ecological data, there is less emphasis on managing the resulting data
effectively. This is an increasingly important skill set; many funding
agencies require data management plans, and journals are requiring that
data pertaining to published articles be accessible. Ecologists with good
data management skills will be able to maximize the productivity of their
own research program, effectively and efficiently share their data with the
scientific community, and potentially benefit from the re-use of their data by
others.
The purpose of this workshop is to give attendees a set of practical tools
for organizing and sharing their data through all parts of the research
cycle. The target audience is early-career scientists but is open to any
researchers who would benefit from developing better data management
skills. Faculty members who would like to include best practices for
preparing data in curricula are encouraged to attend. Topics will include
data structure, quality control, data documentation, and the importance of
good data management practices for data sharing, collaboration, and data
re-use. Workshop participants must bring their own laptop to participate in
hands-on activities and are encouraged to bring their own data sets, which
instructors will assist in organizing.
This workshop is a modification of the 2010 workshop, “How to Manage
Ecological Data for Effective Use and Re-use: A Workshop for Early Career
Scientists” which received positive feedback. A related workshop on
preparing a Data Management Plan may also be useful to participants.