Towards successful research data management

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Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
Location:
P1 OPINNÄYTTEET D 2019 Manurung

Date

2019

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Collaborative and Industrial Design

Language

en

Pages

70+7

Series

Abstract

Until today, many services available for research data management were not supported by adequate information about how they work together throughout the research lifecycle and how they will be beneficial for Aalto researcher. The objective of this study is to provide the researchers with a seamless path and process that best supports the research at Aalto University. The target group is researchers for a few particular factors. First, since they play a significant strategic role in contributing to the scientific community and encouraging research. Second, they are the data creator from first-hand individuals who also manage the research data in line with FAIR data principles; in order to make data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. The case study has been undertaken in Finland within Aalto research group. This thesis is a collaborative project between Aalto University Information Technology Services (Aalto IT Services) and Center for Science (CSC), a Finnish center of expertise in information technology in facilitating the Research Data Management (RDM) for the researchers. This project has allowed the author to work with IT-related people who have given particular challenges during the research and built a solution with the consideration of the end-users point of view, the service provider and institution goals. The study covered interviews with Aalto researchers from various departments, a data management agent, and CSC. The method of service design is used to understand the needs and behavior of consumers and connect stakeholders to the target users that are useful for developing ideas in the development of future service. Several interaction problems were found after mapping the customer journey with all the challenges and expectations. The result of the user interviews was created user typologies that were useful in identifying patterns in customers and in leveraging their roles in RDM development. The main findings of this study proposed the broader and the more comprehensive information on the services available to all Aalto departments, integration between Aalto services and external services, and greater accessibility to share and collaborate with researchers from various universities or countries. The study concluded by analyzing the improvement of ideas through internal validity. It is suggested that IT supporters need to know more about the culture of customers on how to record everything, particularly since they have different types of data and resources used during their research. Communication plays an important role in further developing the research data management services at Aalto University.

Description

Supervisor

Lucero, Andres

Thesis advisor

Lucero, Andres
Lähteenmäki, Ilari

Keywords

service design, research data management, information technology, cross-disciplinary, customer experience, research lifecycle

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