Pilot Project: BAS2016
SND's pilot project Libraries - Archives - SND (BAS) was launched in 2016. The project was a collaboration between SND and libraries and archives at various universities. The aim of the pilot project BAS2016 was to identify an effective model for transferring data management expertise to a Data Access Unit (DAU) at participating universities.
The pilot project consisted of four phases:
1. training for DAU members led by SND staff: lectures and workshops
2. training for researchers led by DAU members: lectures and workshops, on-site support by SND
3. training for researchers led by DAU members: lectures and workshops, without SND on-site (but available for remote support)
4. transfer of data and metadata to a metadata catalogue and a common national data area, on-site support by SND
The first phase comprised five separate workshops, held on five separate occasions or combined into two or three more comprehensive sessions.
The five workshop topics were:
1. background, introduction, open access to research data, archiving
2. data management and data management plans
3. metadata for research data
4. documentation and documentation tools
5. relevant legislation
Five universities took part in the pilot project: University of Gothenburg, Lund University, Malmö University, Jönköping University and Luleå University of Technology. Each university was assigned a contact person from SND, responsible for communication and practicalities. Research coordinators and data managers from SND rotated responsibility for the various workshops, and SND's lawyer was also involved. Data about performance, responses and any emerging problems was gathered during the lectures and practical exercises, to be used as the basis for evaluation. Evaluation The evaluation of the project was divided into two parts; the revision of education material and the evaluation report of the project. The content of phase 1 was revised and extended after the pilot project, and this new material is now being used in the follow-up BAS2.0, which started in the autumn. The evaluation report is still in progress, but the main finding is that this model for a crash course in data management education works well. Further activity During the autumn, the pilot project was succeeded by BAS2.0. This is now part of SND’s core activities and has been held at four more universities during the autumn: Umeå University, Stockholm University, Swedish University of Agricultural Science (Uppsala) and Blekinge Institute of Technology. The web magazine Curie has written an article about the BAS 16: .Research Data that everyone can reach