Digging into research repositories: Join the ReOps Community’s latest global project
One of our most popular channels in the ReOps Community Slack is the #research_repositories channel. Here our members commiserate on the challenges inherent in storing research and share the solutions they’ve found. As a community of researchers who research researchers it was evident that momentum was gathering around dedicating a global project to investigating and defining the problem space. And so that’s exactly what we’ve done, in the past few months we’ve kicked off our third ReOps Community global effort #researchrepos.
Perhaps our most ambitious effort yet, the repos project consists of several work streams dedicated to diving deep into the problem space. The main areas of focus are:
- Research: Utilize qualitative and quantitative user research methodologies to generate a deep understanding of the problem space
- Data modeling: Establish a POV for universal taxonomies and content models
- Governance: Explore the challenges inherent with adoption and maintenance and develop recommendations for best practices
This project aims to deliver a body of research around the repository problem space and recommendations and best practices for data modeling and governance for research repositories.
What this project distinctly isn’t is an effort to build a research repository. There are already companies investing in developing these products. If you are in this group, we welcome you to reach out to chat about how you can support the Community and get involved. As with all our projects, the work we do will be released for public use by Creative Commons License ShareAlike 4.0 and our guidelines will apply throughout the project.
As with all ReOps Community global initiatives the success of this one relies on the passionate volunteers who gift their time as participants, doers, and leaders. Whether you have just a few hours or would like to join the core team on a work stream we hope you’ll consider getting involved in the project. To do so reach out in the #research_repositories channel in the ReOps Community Slack or reach out to myself or Brigette Metzler, Holly Cole, or Mark McElhaw, all of whom deserve much credit for distilling the community’s thoughts into an actionable plan.
We know getting involved in projects like this one can be overwhelming, there’s value in contributions of all sizes and all levels of skill so if you’re interested in getting involved but aren’t sure where to start or how you can help please reach out, we are happy to answer questions.
Whether or not you’d like to get involved in this project we welcome everyone interested in ResearchOps to join the Community on Slack.
