Tailoring organizational support services for research data management in the open science context : service self-assessment tool pilot

This thesis aimed to explore how support services for research data management (RDM) and its open science aspects can be tailored in research organizations to the needs of service users, while also taking into account the external requirements set by policies, legislation, and recognized best practices. The theoretical part outlines the background of open science in sociology and philosophy of science, and how it relates to research data. The various aspects of RDM and potential problems are discussed, followed by a brief review of previous research on the organization of RDM support services. The empirical part is based on the service design approach, gathering information on service users’ needs and experiences in the first stage and involving various stakeholders in the formulation of steps towards solutions in the second stage.

The purpose of this thesis was not to collect data for service development at a specific institution, instead, the goal was to evaluate whether the selected methods and tools can provide valuable information for the development of RDM support services. The data was collected at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in 2020. A survey questionnaire was used to explore what kind of needs, attitudes and experiences researchers had in topics where RDM support services could be useful. The results were analysed quantitatively with basic descriptive statistics and qualitatively with content analysis in case of open-ended questions. In the second stage, the Research Infrastructure Self Evaluation (RISE) model developed by the British Digital Curation Centre was tested in six semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in RDM services, to explore how these experts would evaluate the usefulness of the RISE model for service self-assessment. The interview data were analysed using theory-driven content analysis. The discussion also explored the overarching research question whether the survey worked together with the service self-assessment interviews as useful tools for RDM support service development.

The results confirmed that the selected tools can offer some useful information for RDM support service development, however, further research would be needed to develop the proposed approach into a standard methodology framework for RDM support service self-assessment, which could be used by organizations to evaluate their own service portfolio. The survey questionnaire could be refined and accompanied by an instrument for follow-up interviews. The suggested modifications to the definitions of capabilities and their maturity levels in the RISE framework to better suit the Finnish research environment would have to be confirmed by at least one more pilot evaluation.