OBJECTIVE

The Algoma University Research Data Management Institutional Strategy aims to support Algoma University researchers by promoting responsible Research Data Management and ethical data stewardship practices in accordance with the Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy and Tri-Agency Statement of Principles on Digital Data Management. 

Algoma University is committed to achieving best practices in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in all types of research. Research applications now require consideration and plans around removing barriers in academic research to make it more accessible. Funding agencies are committed to EDI and strive to provide support and information for researchers: Best practices in equity, diversity, and inclusion in research practice and design. 

Our institutional strategy provides guidelines and information for the responsible management of Indigenous Research Data and the required information for all researchers on Data Sovereignty and the First Nations principles of Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession (OCAP) Indigenous Data Sovereignty “which refers to the right of Indigenous peoples to control data from and about their communities and lands, articulating both individual and collective rights to data access and to privacy” (Raine, et al., p. 300). 

The Institutional Strategy will be regularly reviewed and updated on an annual basis.

 

TRI-AGENCY RESEARCH DATA MANAGEMENT POLICY

The Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy requires that each institution create a Research Data Management Plan to support all of their researchers. The Tri-Agencies consist of the following organizations:

• The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR);
• The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); and 
• The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).* 

*The Tri-Agencies are often referred to as “the Agencies.” They are federal granting agencies that promote and support research, research training, knowledge transfer, and innovation within Canada.

“The Agencies expect the research they fund to be conducted to the highest professional and disciplinary standards, both domestically and internationally. These standards support research excellence by ensuring that research is performed ethically and makes good use of public funds, experiments and studies are replicable, and research results are as accessible as possible. Research data management (RDM) is a necessary part of research excellence.”  Source

 

Brief Summary of Requirements

• Strategy must be made publicly available on the institution’s website with contact information to which inquiries about the strategy can be directed.
• Each strategy will reflect the institution’s size, research intensity, and existing RDM capacity.
• Tri-Agencies expect high quality strategies that outline how the institution will provide its researchers with support in the following areas:
  • Recognizing data an an important research output;
  • Ethical, legal and commercial data management practices;
  • Promoting importance to researchers, staff, and students; and
  • Guidance on how to properly manage data.

 

Ethical, Legal, and Commercial Obligations

The Tri-Agencies released the Research Data Management Policy in 2021 to help guide institutions and their researchers to ensure ethical, legal, and commercial obligations are understood and achieved. 

“The Agencies believe that research data collected through the use of public funds should be responsibly and securely managed and be, where ethical, legal and commercial obligations allow, available for reuse by others. To this end, the agencies support the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) guiding principles for research data management and stewardship” (Government of Canada, 2021-03-15, Preamble section, para. 2). 

This Algoma University Research Data Management Institutional Strategy is a framework to support researchers in their efforts to achieve compliance with the requirements of the Tri-Agency.

 

RESPONSIBLE DATA MANAGEMENT

 

Support for Algoma University Researchers

To ensure the correct procedures of research data management, Algoma University researchers have many supports available to them. They can connect with the university’s Research Advisory Committee, the Research Ethics Board, the Research Office staff, or Wishart Library Librarians for assistance. 

There are also National Research Repositories and digital tools available for researchers. Training tools and information about repositories is available. Please reference the following information available from the Digital Research Alliance of Canada Research Data Management website. 

Informational workshops will also be available during our Annual Research Week in the Winter Semester, and individual information sessions can be requested from the Wishart Library. With the future addition of a Research and Scholarly Communications Librarian, Wishart Library will aim to offer informational workshops about research data management each semester. Also, with additional librarians, the library will expand workshops and training on research data management to undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff from beginning considerations about research through to publication and dissemination.

 

Repositories and Deposit Datasets

 

Institutional Repository for Research Data to fulfill Research Accessibility Requirements and Dynamic Research Exhibits and Presentations

The Algoma University Digital Repository for Research provides open access to ensure that published and unpublished research, scholarship, and other materials are available and equitably accessible locally, nationally, and internationally. The Institutional Repository will provide access to textual and multimedia content, such as theses, photos, and other file formats.

Researchers can find support on using the Institutional Repository through the Wishart Library. Our librarians can assist you in answering your questions and options available for dynamic research presentations and publication of various types of research.

 

Future Shared Repository

Algoma University Wishart Library is a member of the Ontario Council of University Libraries’ (OCUL) Shared Institutional Repository Working Group, which was tasked with determining the viability of a province-wide Institutional Repository. Our eServices Librarian, Robin Isard, participated as a committee member. This is in the test pilot stage, and partnerships with CARL (Canadian Association of Research Libraries) and CRKN (Canadian Research Knowledge Network) are being considered to combine efforts on the desired outcome for an eventual shared nation-wide repository.

 

Trusted Digital Repository for Long-term Preservation of Research Scholarship and Materials

Permafrost

Algoma University researchers have access to Permafrost via our association with OCUL and Scholars Portal. Permafrost is hosted by the University of Toronto and provides long-term preservation for digital content. For example, a gallery of historical images may be digitized for access and preservation. Web optimized images would be hosted in a user-friendly gallery on the Institutional Repository, while the very high-resolution original scanned images would be stored in Permafrost.

 

Datasets Deposits

Borealis

Borealis is the Canadian Dataverse Repository, implemented by Scholars Portal and hosted by the University of Toronto. As a member of the OCUL, the Wishart library provides access to Borealis for Algoma University Researchers.

Through Algoma University Wishart Library, AU researchers can deposit datasets in Borealis. The Dataverse Project (not to be confused with Microsoft’s Dataverse, a business data storage service) which is “an open source web application to share, preserve, cite, explore, and analyze research data.” It was developed by Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) in collaboration with Harvard University Libraries and is used around the world to store datasets. 

 

QUESTION GUIDE

 

What is a Data Management Plan?

A data management plan (DMP) is a document you create that sets out how you will organize, store, and share your research data at each stage in your project. A DMP is a living document that can be modified to accommodate changes in the course of your research. The responsible management of data is considered to be an integral duty of the researcher with support from their institution.

 

How do I create a Data Management Plan?

For step-by-step guidance in creating a Data Management Plan, we recommend the following online tools. Researchers may also consult the Research Advisory Committee, the Research Office, or the Wishart Library Librarians.

• DMP Assistant – To create DMPs for Canadian funding agencies, such as CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC

• DMPTool – To create DMPs for US funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation

 

What about metadata? 

Before collecting data, researchers should consider the metadata they will need to provide alongside the data to make it easily understood, as well as the privacy, intellectual property, copyright, and/or licensing issues to be addressed with regard to the sharing of that data.

Questions for researchers to consider.

• What types of data will be created?
• Which policies (funding, legal, and institution) will apply to the data?
• Who will own, have access to, and be responsible for managing the data?
• What equipment and methods will be used to capture, process, and document the data?
• How will the data be organized and documented?
• Where will the data be stored during and after the research?
• How will the data be shared and under what provisions and permissions?

 

REFERENCES

 

Overarching Guides and Principles

Digital Alliance of Canada. Alliance de recherche numerique du Canada.(2023). Research Data Management. https://alliancecan.ca/en/services/research-data-management

Government of Canada. (2021). Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy. Government of Canada Research Data Management. https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/063.nsf/eng/h_97610.html

 

Indigenous Data Sovereignty

The First Nations principles of ownership, control, access, and possession – more commonly known as OCAP. https://fnigc.ca/ocap-training/

The Government of Canada’s United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, Canada’s official acceptance of the UN Declaration – more commonly referred to as UNDRIP. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/declaration/about-apropos.html; https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf 

Raine, S. C., Kukutai, T., Walter, M., Figueroa-Rodrigues, O. L., Walker, J., & Axelsson, P. (2019). Indigenous data sovereignty. In The State of Open Data (p. 300). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2677801 

University of British Columbia Library Indigenous Research. (2023). University of British Columbia. https://researchdata.library.ubc.ca/plan/indigenous-data/

University of Saskatchewan University Library Research Guides Research Data Management: Indigenous Data Governance & Sovereignty. (2023). University of Saskatchewan. https://libguides.usask.ca/RDM/IndigenousDataSovereignty

 

The strategy is available in a PDF file format here.

Algoma University continues to move forward with its research and innovation efforts. Throughout Year 2, the university continued to build on its strengths with industry, communities, external partners, and others.

The two main priorities listed in the Year 1 Annual Commercialization Plan response focused on increasing faculty and student support through the expansion of the Research and Graduate Studies Offices, including:

• Additional staffing resources and infrastructure to better support faculty and students, better promote community-integrated research and innovation, and better support the co-creation of research-related policy and procedures to guide researchers and industry partners.

 

Year 2 Accomplishments

• An Indigenous Research Framework with Indigenous input was drafted and adheres to the Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP) and United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) principles. The Framework will be widely consulted, and the plan is to implement it during the 2024-25 academic year.
• Two new Research Office positions were approved for 2024-25 hiring and searches are underway. We anticipate up to eight (8) additional positions will be hired by the end of the 2025 Winter Term to further support Indigenous research, external grant funding, and commercialization/intellectual property (IP).
• The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences hired a grant writer to assist full-time faculty members with their external grant applications.
• Research space/infrastructure is undergoing development and upgrading to establish an Animal Care Facility (including fish holdings) and a Containment Level 2 (CL2) biosafety lab on the Sault Ste. Marie campus, with an anticipated renovation completion date of September 2024. Additional research space and labs are being renovated on the Brampton campus, as well.
• Additional internal funding was provided through: 
  • A new initiative (Algoma University Strategic Initiative Fund) for faculty to explore research through seed funding or full proposals, with 23 out of 29 research-related proposals awarded; and
  • A new pilot initiative (Research Assistant Funding Program) to build research capacity and increase output and student training through undergraduate Research Assistants and graduate students.

• Additional tenure-track faculty positions to support the incoming graduate degree programs to ensure that: a) research-intensive faculty are able to provide ample research experiences to Algoma University; and b) students and faculty have the capacity to promote their research.

 

Year 2 Accomplishments

• 35 new full-time faculty positions were recommended to the Algoma University Senate for hiring in 2024-25 to better support existing programs, including the university’s two current graduate programs.
• An additional graduate program, Master of Social Work, will begin in the 2024 Fall Term.

 

The accomplishments listed above have allowed the Office of Research and Innovation to help advance faculty members’ research and innovation efforts during Year 2. With two new hires approved, and up to an additional eight hires anticipated for approval in Year 3, Algoma University continues to: expand its capacity to support full-time faculty members and graduate students; and establish a foundation for further growth in commercialization, IP investment decisions, licensing approaches, and technology development.

Since 2008, Algoma University has approached research and innovation activities by advancing its research and creativity across cultures for knowledge exchange between the Northern Ontario, national, and global communities, as well as through its partnership with the Northern Ontario Research Development Ideas and Knowledge (NORDIK) Institute.

The university’s four Canada Research Chairs (CRCs) currently focus on environmental issues, health-related issues, and healing and reconciliation. As the university continues to build on its strengths with industry, communities, external partners, and others, it has identified priorities to advance these strengths well beyond current capacity.

These priorities largely focus on faculty and student support through the expansion of the Research and Graduate Studies Offices, which includes plans for:

• Additional staffing resources and infrastructure to better support faculty and students, better promote community-integrated research and innovation, and better support the co-creation of research-related policy and procedures to guide researchers and industry partners. For example, an Indigenous Research Framework will be created with Indigenous input that adheres to the Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP) and United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) principles.
• Additional tenure-track faculty positions to support the incoming graduate degree programs to ensure that: a) research-intensive faculty are able to provide ample research experiences to Algoma University; and b) students and faculty have the capacity to promote their research.

In early 2022, the Ontario government released its Commercialization Mandate Policy Framework (CMPF) to guide the postsecondary sector’s work in improving commercialization outcomes and strengthening the focus on generating Intellectual Property (IP).

Algoma University’s Commercialization Framework highlights research excellence and demonstrates its commitment to driving commercialization outcomes across the sector. As Algoma University advances its IP capacity, the institution will strive to maximize its commercialization opportunities, protect Ontarians’ interests, and strengthen the Ontario economy. With campuses in Brampton, Sault Ste. Marie, and Timmins, the institution’s research and innovation priorities are closely aligned with the cultural, economic, and social realities of both Southern and Northeastern Ontario.

The first year of Algoma University’s Commercialization Plan will involve researchers meeting with the private and public sectors, as well as with innovation intermediaries, to build relationships at all three campuses – Brampton, Sault Ste. Marie, and Timmins.

Discussions with IPON will be valuable as the institution continues to expand scholarly output at Algoma University. The Research Office expansion will provide guidance to researchers whose work has commercial potential, will assist those researchers to file patents and other forms of IP where indicated, and will provide guidance on the commercialization of IP where appropriate.

While Algoma University does not yet have IP expertise on staff, an IP, Data Management, and Community/Industry Liaison position is in development. For now, external professional advice and support will be provided when and where needed.

As the Research Office continues to grow within the first year of the Commercialization Plan, the institution will hire personnel to establish a foundation for further growth of the research and innovation ecosystem at Algoma University.