2022-2023 RDM Workshops | Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship

Learn to securely gather, manage, store, and share your research data with the Research Data Management Workshop series. Register for the entire suite of 2022-2023 RDM Workshops today.

Access recordings of RDM workshops and events.

What is Digital Scholarship?

Hybrid Panel | September 20, 2022
Presenters: Maddie Brockbank (PhD Candidate, Social Work), Danica Evering (Research Data Management Specialist), Vivek Jadon (Data Specialist), Shaila Jamal (PhD Candidate, School of Earth, Environment, and Society), and Jess Rauchberg (PhD Candidate, Communication and Media Arts). Moderated by Jay Brodeur and Andrea Zeffiro (Co-Directors of the Sherman Centre).

Have you ever wanted to learn more about Digital Scholarship? This vast and constantly evolving field includes data analysis and visualization, Digital Humanities, and beyond. At this panel, attendees will learn about the many possibilities for those working in Digital Scholarship.

*Presented in collaboration with DMDS and DASH.

Watch a recording of the workshop.

Set Yourself Up for Research Success: Manage Your Data like a Pro and Get your own ORCiD Profile

In-Person Workshop | October 6, 2022
Instructors: Jeff Demaine (Bibliometrics and Research Impact Librarian) and Isaac Pratt (Research Data Management Specialist)

Your profile as a researcher is a story that you create, and you will need an online presence that is separate from popular social media. Learn how to distinguish yourself from other researchers by creating a free ORCiD account that will automatically showcase all your academic activities, ensuring that you get credit for your work. This is the book in which your research story will be written.

Set up your research project for success with good data management practices. Learn how to organize and document your data to save time and make your life easier. Follow a few simple tips to keep your data safe and securely store your research data so your thesis isn’t taken down by a hard drive failure.

Best Practices for Managing Data in Your Research

Hybrid Workshop | October 26, 2022
Instructors: Danica Evering and Isaac Pratt (Research Data Management Specialists)

In this introductory workshop, learn about research data management best practices and how investing a small amount of time in organizing your data now can save you a lot of time and prevent future headaches. We will go over best practices for data planning, storage, organization, preservation, and sharing.

*Presented in collaboration with DMDS.

Watch a recording of the workshop.

Data Management Plans: Intro to DMP Assistant

Virtual Workshop | November 16, 2022
Instructors: Danica Evering and Isaac Pratt (Research Data Management Specialists)

Confucius said “One who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door”. In research, planning for data management helps you prepare for data questions and problems before they happen. In this session, we will go over principles of data management planning and go through a demo of the Portage DMP Assistant, a web-based tool for developing and collaborating on Data Management Plans in the Canadian research context.

Watch a recording of the workshop.

What You Need to Know about the Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy

Virtual Workshop December 7, 2022
Instructors: Danica Evering and Isaac Pratt (Research Data Management Specialists)

Are you a researcher who has received a Tri-Agency (CIHR, NSERC, or SSHRC) grant? Do you plan to apply for a Tri-Agency grant in the future? Join this session to learn more about the new Tri-Agency Research Data Management policy, what it means for you as a researcher, and the services McMaster provides to help you meet the new requirements.

Watch a recording of the workshop.

Best Practices for Managing Data in Your Research

Hybrid Workshop | January 18, 2023
Instructors: Danica Evering and Isaac Pratt (Research Data Management Specialists)

*Presented in collaboration with DMDS.

Depositing & Sharing Data Online with McMaster Dataverse

Virtual Workshop | January 25, 2023
Instructors: Danica Evering and Isaac Pratt (Research Data Management Specialists)

Are you thinking of sharing your data for re-use by other researchers? Have you been asked to share your data by a journal or funder? Are you worried about the long term accessibility of your data? Join the Research Data Management team for this workshop on how to deposit your data on McMaster Dataverse for archival, preservation, and sharing. Learn more about how openly sharing data can benefit you and the research community, and how online repositories are helping to improve the availability of research data.

Securely Managing and Publishing Sensitive Data

Virtual Workshop | February 8, 2023
Instructor: Isaac Pratt (Research Data Management Specialist)

Are you working with environmental, commercial, health, personal, or other sensitive data? Are you unsure whether your data is sensitive and unclear on what you need your responsibilities are for managing it? In this workshop, we’ll discuss the foundations of working with sensitive data including how to protect your data, your research participants, and yourself. We’ll take about how and when to de-identify sensitive data, and how to share sensitive data.

What Are ORCiDs and DOIs–and Why Do I Need Them?

Virtual Workshop | February 15, 2023
Instructors: Jeff Demaine (Bibliometrics and Research Impact Librarian) and Danica Evering (Research Data Management Specialist)

We’ve all seen a 404-error message, trying to access an old hyperlink. Link rot happens when a site is removed or a URL stops pointing to the right location. Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are reference links that can never rot and are increasingly important in an interconnected research world!

While some fields and researchers have actively incorporated PIDs for many years now, others rely on interpersonal networks and personal websites to connect their research. This workshop will give you skills to augment those important connections with PIDs.

Some might have received a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for an article published in a journal, but they can also be used to share data (field notes, methods, audio recordings, code), connected to a website, or associated with an artwork. An Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCiD) is a unique link where you can connect to all your expansive scholarly output—datasets, articles, exhibitions, projects, interviews, education, residencies, and more.

Used together, PIDs can help you find new collaborators across disciplines, recognize the breadth of your work beyond journals, and allow you to connect to your research practice over time.

Before You Dig: Finding and Reusing Datasets

Virtual Workshop | March 15, 2023
Instructors: Danica Evering and Isaac Pratt (Research Data Management Specialists)

Are you starting a research project? There may be existing datasets that could inform the work you’re doing and ensure you’re digging into new research areas. Along with systematic literature review and active participation in your field, a dataset search is another tool to inform your research context.

Join McMaster RDM Services to learn more about finding and reusing datasets in data repositories across the world. Find potential new collaborators, verify or reproduce results, expand on existing data, and more!

Qualitative Data: Practices for RDM Planning and Sharing

Hybrid Workshop | April 5, 2023
Instructor: Danica Evering (Research Data Management Specialist)

Qualitative methods let us share nuanced interpretations of multifaceted issues. They let us understand lived experiences and motivations, see a research question from different standpoints, and highlight contexts. Qualitative research data can take the form of interview transcripts, oral histories, focus groups, field notes, audio, video, and more. Some qualitative researchers are accustomed to research data management (RDM) and data sharing, while others are less familiar. This workshop welcomes both groups to learn about best practices and considerations for managing and sharing quantitative data. We’ll start with practical skills and workflows, and then move on to a discussion about hesitations and urgencies. Qualitative research often grows out of relationships of trust, and information is deeply contextual, making data sharing sticky. However, communities are often approached by different researchers for similar information, and data sharing can also help alleviate research fatigue. Let’s learn and unpack together!

*Presented in collaboration with DASH

Version Control with Git

Virtual Workshop | April 11, 2023
Instructor: John Fink (Digital Scholarship Librarian)

Come learn about git! Git is a version control system widely used in software engineering, academia, and anywhere where projects need reliable and granular versioning — especially when the projects need to scale to thousands of contributors. You’ll learn the basics of working with git repositories, how to pull new repositories from sites like Github, and more.

*Presented in collaboration with DASH.