Data management proposals, in detail

Introduction

Recently, Dirk brought up an issue:

• Some journal articles require supplementary data
• At present this is stored on the staff pages
• These are somewhat ephemeral.
• The URL to the data must be persistent for contractual reasons

There are other forms of persistent link that we preserve, e.g. sites associated with specific projects.

However, we're not infallible! This document contains some suggested improvements based on my presentation at the meeting which you can vote on at the BioSS mailtalk site. There's also the opportunity to write in your own suggestions

Documents database to store supplementary data

Regarding the issue faced by Dirk:

• Proposal: Extend the ``upload'' feature of the documents database to allow additional materials
• Question: For all document types or just some?
• Question: Any privacy/contractual issues here?
• Question: Is a single file at a time enough?

Reorganise personal pages

These are your brief ``bio'' pages on the main website.

• Some current examples
  1. http://www.bioss.ac.uk/staff/davidn.html
  2. http://www.bioss.ac.uk/students/leo.html
  3. http://www.bioss.ac.uk/past_students/adriano.html
• These pages reflect a person's role in the organisation
• Not persistent!
• Proposal: provide permanent pages at http://www.bioss.ac.uk/people/ with links from existing URLs.
• Risks: Extra maintenance of site required.

Truly personal webspace

At BioSS users can edit their own pages on the main website

• Limited amount of content permitted
• Difficult to edit for most users
• Direct publication (e.g. http://www.bioss.ac.uk/~glenn/ currently restricted
• Proposal: Restore direct publication in some form
• Risk: Ill-advised ``personal'' content may reflect badly on BioSS
• Risk: Data security issues.

Delegation of responsibility

At present, Muriel and IT are largely responsible for maintaining the main website.

• Lots of minor change requests
• Lack of knowledge of some specific areas, e.g. project websites
• Proposal: Delegate maintenance responsibility to the people involved. Muriel and IT will take on advisory/enabling role.
• Risk: New website management software will be required
• Risk: This might waste more time than it saves
• Practically speaking, a hybrid approach is required.

Data/account retention policies

When a person leaves BioSS usually their account remains active for some time:

• This period is indefinite
• Often years!
• No particular issue about keeping data online/available but:
  1. Question: Who maintains public webpages etc?
  2. Question: Who fields queries/answers email?
  3. Question: Is this sustainable or is this even an issue worth worrying about?
• Whither the Agrenet archive in all this?
• Proposal: Formal policy regarding account retention for a specified period, with automatic expiry.
• Intended outcome focus on sustainable handover of data.
• Risk: This might turn into a big bureaucratic mess.