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University Librarian's Speaker Series features expert insight on research data landscape in Canada

University Librarian’s Speaker Series on Emergent Research in Digital Scholarship returns on Tuesday, May 9 with Chuck Humphrey, director of Portage Network Canada, presenting a talk on emerging developments to support research data management in Canada. The talk takes place at 2:30pm at Osgoode Hall, Room 1001 Ignat Kaneff.

Chuck Humphrey

The release of Canada’s Tri-Agency Statement of Principles on Digital Data Management has heightened awareness around the stewardship of Canada’s digital research outputs. At the national level, the Portage Network, an initiative of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), supports local institutions in the delivery of coordinated strategy and services for research data management.

Humphrey has supported data services at the University of Alberta since 1992, and has worked on numerous regional, national and international initiatives to increase access to data for teaching and research purposes. He was involved in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Science Forums on Data and Research Infrastructure for the Social Sciences in 2010-2011 and on Ethics and Big Data in 2014-2015. Humphrey was the lead investigator on a University of Alberta Libraries’ successful application for a data centre in the Canadian International Polar Year (IPY) Data Assembly Centres Network, which has now become the Canadian Polar Data Network. He currently serves on the Steering Committee of Research Data Canada; is a board member of the Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administrative Information; and has been a key participant in CARL’s Project ARC working group, which developed the vision and framework for Portage.

At York University, the Open Access and Open Data Steering Committee is compiling supports for research data management, and will embark on a campus-wide educational program in the fall of 2017. Joy Kirchner, University librarian, co-chairs the Open Access Open Data Steering Committee with Sushanta Mitra, associate vice-president, Research. Kirchner welcomes the opportunity to open this conversation.

“It is our hope that Mr. Humphrey’s visit to York will spark discussion across campus, while at the same time highlighting the excellent supports that the Libraries and others at York have been developing to manage research data, in concert with existing provincial and national initiatives,” she said.

Research data management is a shared effort that involves campus partnerships between researchers, administrators, research officers, libraries, IT services, ethics offices, and graduate studies. It also benefits from partnerships at the national level, where Portage works with the associations and organizations representing professionals in these areas, for example, the Canadian Association of Research Administrators and the Canadian Association of Research Ethics Boards.

This presentation will provide an overview of what is happening nationally around research data management and the work of Portage, and, time will be allotted for discussion.

For more, visit www.yorku.ca/digitalspeakerseries.