Matthew Nichols
Shona FergusonThe UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) ambition is to make the world a better place through science addressing climate change, promoting biodiversity, and creating sustainable ecosystems. Effective data management is essential for addressing these complex environmental challenges: it increases the impact of our research, improves our research integrity and validity, and enhances the transparency of our processes. We, the UKCEH Data Stewardship Team (DST), are a distributed network of staff providing expert guidance and support in all aspects of data stewardship, data management planning and use of state-of-the-art digital infrastructures. FAIR Wizard, launched at UKCEH in December 2022 by the DST, is a questionnaire-based tool that facilitates the creation and maintenance of effective data management plans (DMPs). It gives project managers and researchers guidance on good research data management practices, and insight into how their data aligns with the FAIR principles – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. This blog post outlines our journey with FAIR Wizard, its implementation, and the benefits it has brought for our research data stewardship.
Environmental research increasingly involves tackling intricate, multidisciplinary questions requiring collaboration and vast amounts of data. The FAIR principles offer a structured approach to managing these data challenges by enhancing the value and reusability of datasets. Adopting FAIR practices when working with data promotes integrative science, amplifies the impact of research, and aligns with the open science agenda. FAIR Wizard provides a practical solution for applying these principles. By guiding researchers through a smart questionnaire tailored to UKCEH science, the Wizard helps produce high-quality bespoke DMPs with minimal effort. It promotes adoption and understanding of the FAIR principles while reducing the administrative burden on researchers.
The journey began with constructing a bespoke knowledge model (KM) specific to UKCEH's research domains: freshwater, terrestrial and near-earth atmospheric sciences, by expanding and adapting the original KM developed for the life sciences community in the ELIXIR programme. This process included developing:
Project managers are encouraged to collaborate with their team when completing their questionnaire, and there is functionality allowing them to flag, comment, share, and provide feedback on individual questions.
The next step was to develop document templates which provide researchers with the ability to generate custom DMPs in formats such as MS Word and PDF, and dataset/model/software/physical sample listings as Excel spreadsheets. The templates convert the questionnaire responses into a mixture of prose-style and bullet-pointed text, and previews of the resulting documents update in real-time. The preview documents contain warnings of any inconsistencies and issues with completeness through logical checks on questionnaire answers, as well as submission instructions. We created additional outputs from the same template, using the same KM, allowing users to generate DMPs tailored for different funders or purposes from a single questionnaire, minimising duplication of effort.
Once generated, DMPs can then be submitted via our submission service. This service ensures that all mandatory questions have been answered and uploads a snapshot of the DMP to a shared library, which promotes research transparency.
Since the initial development, FAIR Wizard has become a central component of UKCEH project management and data management workflows. When a project reaches proposal stage in our project management system, a FAIR Wizard questionnaire is created automatically and populated with some basic information. Project managers are notified on creation of their questionnaire, and when their questionnaire moves to a different phase of the project. On submission of their DMP, project managers receive automated emails containing a PDF of their plan and a spreadsheet containing a list of the datasets they will be generating.
Based on successful implementation across UKCEH, the FAIR Wizard has been further customised for use by the Natural Environment Research Council’s Environmental Data Service (NERC EDS). The network of distributed data centres that form the EDS use the tool in collaboration with NERC grant holders, spanning all environmental science domains: atmosphere and climate, earth observation, polar and cryosphere, marine, terrestrial and freshwater, geoscience, solar and space physics.
UKCEH has a duty to ensure that our research is carried out to the highest standards of scientific and ethical practice. We are in the process of integrating the UKCEH Research Ethics Committee project workflows into our FAIR Wizard setup. Ethics checklist questions are asked as a separate chapter in the questionnaire and have bespoke document outputs. The ethics team will be notified, according to the answers, when a project requires a full ethics review. We will develop high-level reporting on the ethics question responses. This will reduce duplication of effort on the part of project managers, streamline the workflow for the ethics committee, and improve tracking of ethics committee approvals and project implementation.
FAIR Wizard includes a REST API which can be used to query and manipulate data from questionnaires. We are utilising this functionality by developing a reporting tool which will give an overview of how data are managed and how FAIR data are across the organisation. This will include diagrams showing the destination of data produced by UKCEH projects and will allow users to see the progress towards achieving FAIR data over time. It will also provide high-level metrics on organisational data management for senior management.
FAIR Wizard has helped to improve data stewardship at UKCEH, addressing many challenges faced by project managers and data managers:
Feedback from UKCEH researchers highlights the Wizard’s usability and effectiveness. Many have noted its ability to simplify complex processes and improve their understanding of data stewardship best practices.
FAIR Wizard has become an integral part of UKCEH's approach to data management, embedding the FAIR principles into our daily workflows. Along with relevant training, an informative and up-to-date Research Data Management hub, and direct liaison with projects to improve data management and stewardship practices, FAIR Wizard is contributing to our strategy of increasing FAIR data in UKCEH. By guiding researchers in making their data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, we are not only enhancing the quality and impact of our research but also fostering a culture that values and prioritises good data stewardship. This cultural shift is essential for addressing complex environmental challenges and promoting collaborative, integrative science.
The implementation of FAIR Wizard at UKCEH highlights the value of innovative tools in transforming research data management. By simplifying the creation of high-quality data management plans and promoting understanding and adoption of FAIR principles, FAIR Wizard has significantly improved our data stewardship practices. This transformation underscores the potential for digital tools to enhance data management efforts across the research community, ultimately contributing to a more open and collaborative scientific environment.
