The Marketing Data Services to Researchers working group has collected good practices, which will be published weekly during the autumn. The series starts with is chairperson Pauli Assinen’s presentation of the project.
The main working method of the Researcher's Data Services Marketing working group has become the collection of good practices. The first ones were collected in small group work at the Open Science Autumn Conference on December 8, 2020. Currently, in August 2021, there are a dozen identified good practices, and the series will start next week with a presentation of Web Café events.
What does “data services” mean?
We have identified good practices in working group meetings. The premise has been that no practices are too small to be shared. In the course of our work, we have asked ourselves time and time again what we mean by data services. I have not yet found much help in, for example, the TUHA glossary or the Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences. I have not had time to examine whether there would be definitions in the outputs of other Open Science Coordination working groups.
The concept of marketing is clearer, although the use of marketing terms also has its challenges in connection with data services. Regardless of the varying terminology, our goal has been to describe practices that promote researchers’ awareness of services and use of them to process research data. It is therefore part of research support aimed at promoting the use of research data management services.
Suggesting and Publishing Good Practices
The identified practices are recorded in the document Good Practices in Marketing Data Services to Researchers (in Finnish). In connection with the identification, it has been agreed who will prepare the description using the Share Good Open Science Practices! form (in Finnish). The form was prepared by the Guidance on Good Practices in Open Scholarship working group of the Culture of Open Scholarship expert group, led by Jukka Rantasaari. Once our team member has completed the form, Jukka has sent the form information in tabular form to the marketing team for use. Thanks to Jukka for this! The content of the forms is copied as is on the wiki pages.
As can be seen on the Expert Group on the Culture of Open Scholarship web page, a database for publishing the content of the forms has been planned. Since this is not yet in place, the publication of good practices has been discussed in the working group. After a few options, we’ve ended up hinting at a low threshold in the Open Science News column. When we got the green light for our idea from the Coordination of Open Science, we started writing short tips. The texts can be found on the policy-specific wiki pages. We added a small pros / cons rating to each policy.
We hope that the published practices will benefit everyone whose work involves marketing data services! All feedback related to the topic can be sent to pauli.assinen (at) helsinki.fi.
Text: Pauli Assinen, University of Helsinki
Image: Unsplash/Tamanna Rumvee (adapted)
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