The QUALI-FAIR hub gathers competence from different academic groups; six faculties and 12 departments at the University of Oslo, as well as experts from the University of Oslo Library, Fair@UiO and the Nordic centre of excellence QUINT. All of these groups deal with a wide range of research data; from medical information, to field notes, to video and photographs. These data are context-sensitive and often contain personal information about individuals, so they present a number of challenges when it comes to their re-use over time and across studies. The hub will work on making this these data FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable – and still ensure the appropriate protections of subjects of the data.
Making data FAIR
The QUALI-FAIR hub will establish guiding principles, procedures and functional metadata that will facilitate the reuse and (where possible) open access of this context sensitive data. The principles will be translated into practical information that can be used by researchers in future studies. The transfer value of the QUALI-FAIR data to other types of data will be huge. It could also provide a template for university departments to use in making their data own FAIR.
The QUALI-FAIR hub was initiated by the QUINT centre director Kirsti Klette, who is also coordinating the hub. The QUINT centre deals with a large amounts of sensitive information in its classroom video observation studies, so the need for better procedures for this type of data has been apparent to Klette for some time;
“We’ve seen a huge interest from researchers wanting access the data we’ve collected for our classroom studies, but the process of making it available is complicated. There may be legitimate reasons to shield generated data, like personal privacy as well as issues provided in the initial consents, but often the barriers to sharing data have more to do with lack of culture of thinking principled around these issues including administrative and technical and support and procedures.”
The value of making data available for multiple studies has long been acknowledged. There is an ongoing discussion about the importance of making data FAIR, and public funders often require projects to make data available and guarantee its reuse by others. What has been lacking are specific instructions, routines, forms and procedures for making context sensitive data FAIR in practice. The QUALI-FAIR hub will ensure that FAIR data procedures can be easily incorporated as an organic part of a research project's life cycle.
“We are excited to be gathering a group of researchers, IT engineers and administrative staff to look at the existing routines and create new and better ones” says Klette.
A new generation of researchers
Making data FAIR requires significant IT infrastructure as well as the knowledge to use it, so competence building will be an integral part of the QUALI-FAIR hub’s mandate. The Hub will work with young/new researchers, postgraduates, as well as research technicians and administrative workers, to build a competence base in FAIR data processing at UiO.
Maria Dikova, Administrative Leader of the QUINT centre says, “one of the major objectives of this network and hub is to provide courses and support for administrative staff to deal with projects that include context sensitive data.”
The Teaching and Learning Video lab (TLV lab) will be central to the Hub. The TLV lab is part UiO’s Faculty of Educational Sciences and has already built a strong competence base when it comes to FAIR data. The engineers and administrative staff will work with researchers in sharing and expanding this competence over the hub’s project period.
The QUALI-FAIR hub was one of 24 proposals submitted to the University of Oslo’s Strategic Coordination Group for IT research in 2021. It has been granted NOK 3.1 million and is planned for the period of 2021 – 2023.
Facts about the hub
The QUALI-FAIR hub includes data from 12 departments under six different faculties at the University of Oslo:
- Faculty of Social Sciences
- Department of Psychology
- C-REX – Center for Research on Extremism
- Department of Social Anthropology
- Faculty of Educational Sciences
- Department of Teacher Education and School Research
- Department of Special Needs Education
- QUINT - Centre for Quality in Nordic Teaching
- Faculty of Humanities
- RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion
- fourMs Lab (Department of Musicology)
- The Text Laboratory
- The Faculty of Theology
- Faculty of Medicine
- UiO eColab (Institute of Health and Society)
- CanCell – Centre for Cancer Cell Reprogramming
- Faculty of Dentistry
- IT department
Plus
- USIT University Center for Information Technology (UiO)
- University Library of Oslo’s Digital Scholarship Center (DSC)
- University Library of Oslo’s Special Collections