90 Experts Inform Draft Research Data Management Framework for Australian Universities

The ARDC’s Institutional Underpinnings program has completed a draft research data management framework with 25 partner universities.
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In February 2021, the ARDC launched the Institutional Underpinnings program, a ground-breaking collaborative project between 25 of Australia’s universities to develop a shared approach to university research data management in the form of a nationally-agreed framework.

The program aims to increase Australian universities’ capability in research data management and encourage collective problem-solving and alignment across the sector.

Phase 1 of the program is now complete, with the 25 partners contributing to the first draft of the Research Data Management Framework. In Phase 1, all participating universities worked together to identify the 16 key elements of the Framework. They then nominated more than 90 experts to working groups, who further developed the 8 highest-priority elements. The working groups outputs form part of the first draft of the Framework.

Roxanne Missingham OAM, University Librarian and Chief Scholarly Information Officer at Australian National University (ANU) said,

“The project has brought the opportunity for a national discussion that has provided new insights from an extraordinary range of practitioners in research, research support, libraries and scholarly publishing, and is making significant breakthroughs that will lift practice across the nation.

“The discoveries and discussions that we’ve had about the actions that will make a difference have been a golden opportunity for us at ANU.”

In the next phase of the program, the participating universities will run projects to test the working group outputs, and we will collect feedback from the sector more broadly. The results will help us to develop the final Framework.

The Institutional Underpinnings program has attracted attention from Dr Cathy Foley, Chief Scientist of Australia and many other research institutions that are interested to hear of its progress and how to get involved. Currently, the participating universities are working through the project, and there will be opportunities for others to get involved via community consultation in early 2022.

To learn how to contribute to the community consultations in early 2022, subscribe to the ARDC Connect newsletter.

The ARDC is funded through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to support national digital research infrastructure for Australian researchers.