..not sure wealth and taste will have something to do with our Evidence Gatherer roles in JISCMRD02, but I definitely have been around for a while – as have Laura and Jonathan – playing with tools and notions of Research Data Management (RDM). BTW, thanks for the great intros Laura!

With the begin of the JISCMRD Programme in 2009 I started working on the MaDAM project as a ‘user liaison’, trying to understand users’ requirements in their research domains along their data lifecycle, working closely with users and the whole project team on developing a pilot RDM infrastructure covering a technical system, support for Data Management Plans and Policies and embedding all this for our pilot user groups at the University of Manchester, taking into account the institutional landscape and all players – and raising awareness. MaDAM ended mid-2011, but based on the increasing need for a University-wide RDM Service Infrastructure and the pilot’s findings and experiences (MaDAM outputs) we are able to continue our journey with the second phase project MiSS – MaDAM into Sustainable Service. I myself am also a researcher (working at the Manchester eResearch Centre, MeRC at University of Manchester) interested generally in socio-technical systems, RDM, disciplinary differences, processes of adoption and evolving use. My approach with users is a more qualitative one grounded in studies of working practice, iterative system development and user-driven design.

Our Evidence Gatherer role will be very exciting as it involves taking into account the various views and needs of the JISCMRD projects, which means collaborating, learning, identifying themes and trends together and providing lessons learned from our previous endeavours. At the JISCMRD launch event (see Laura’s post below) and also at the IDCC11 in Bristol we talked to many colleagues from the other projects (and the community in general) and already noted topics close to their heart: Sarah Jones commented on Laura’s ‘The Three Monkeys’ post pointing out an important question raised for us in one of the launch event’s breakout sessions “about whether commonalities lie within disciplines or if we should be comparing workflows and processes across disciplines as researchers from different areas may have similar needs”. Similar points from other participants alluded to the need to identify disciplinary differences and commonalities across institutions and in terms of methodological approaches. We are looking forward to helping to ‘link up’, ‘build on previous work’ and ‘create mutual benefits’ through our work as Evidence Gatherers.

Meik Poschen  <meik.poschen@manchester.ac.uk>
Twitter:  @MeikPoschen