Streamline Your Research Materials Photos

Jan 29, 2025

1:00 pm TO 2:00 pm

You've been there--getting home from an incredible research trip to an archive, maps collection, or gallery only to face a folder with thousands of photos all labelled "IMG50293.png." Join Research Data Management Specialist Danica Evering and Data Analysis and Visualization Librarian Subhanya Sivajothy for an overview of Tropy: an open-source solution to explore and manage research photos. Instead of a folder crammed full of a jumble of nameless files, Tropy lets you work closely with your research materials. Starting with an overview of all your images, you can zoom into details and annotate points of interest as you start to uncover your research. It also lets you find patterns and contexts through systematized tagging and metadata. Developed alongside sister softwares Zotero, a reference manager, and Omeka, a digital exhibits system, at George Mason University, it integrates smoothly with its siblings. After introducing Tropy as a tool, this webinar will discuss how to create item records in Zotero, and then how to transform your research into a digital exhibition using the Tropy-Omeka integration.

No prior knowledge of Tropy will be required but please come with a version of the software downloaded for the demo!

Learning Outcomes: Use Tropy to organize, annotate, analyze and manage large research image collections. Select appropriate metadata and implement documentation and tagging systems. Integrate Tropy with Zotero and Omeka to cite archival sources and enhance the impact of your research and digital exhibitions.

Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This virtual workshop will be recorded and shared on the same page, and discoverable via the Sherman Centre's Online Learning Catalogue.

Facilitator Bio: 

Danica Evering holds broad experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Subhanya (she/her) brings a background of research in data justice, science and technology studies, and environmental humanities. She is currently thinking through participatory data design which allow for visualizations that are empowering for the end user.

Certificate Eligibility: This workshop is eligible for the Sherman Centre's certificate program. For more information, visit scds.ca/certificate-program. It is also eligible for the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities. To learn more, visit ccdhhn.ca or contact scds@mcmaster.ca.

Open Research in Practice: Research Data Management Community of Practice

Jan 30, 2025

11:30 am TO 12:30 pm

Open research--sharing data, tools, research results and more--is increasingly important to funders, publishers, and within disciplines. These principles guide responsible research. But how do you practice reproducibility and integrate it into your research workflows? How do you share data and code in a way that helps others understand what you did? How do you navigate this when you work with data from human participants? January’s roundtable will discuss open research in practice from data collection to post-project archiving. Join us Thursday, January 30 at 11:30 AM for a great discussion between researchers!

Dr. Mike Carter (Kinesiology) leads the Action, Cognition, and Metascience Lab focusing on how the human brain controls and learns skilled actions. Dr. Carter's team uses R in their reproducible workflows and publishes their data and scripts to GitHub.

Dr. Lauren Fink (Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour) leads the BEAT Lab which researchers musical time and bodily time, through computational modeling of attention and motor behavior--and beyond. Dr. Fink is a proponent of open science and integrates GitHub and reproducible research into her lab's research work and teaching. 

Here is the meeting link. Learn more and join the RDM community!

Sensitive Data Management

Feb 12, 2025

10:30 am TO 11:30 am

Are you working with environmental, commercial, health, personal, or other sensitive data? Are you unsure whether your data is sensitive and unclear on your responsibilities for managing it?

In this workshop, we will 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.

Presentation by Isaac Pratt, Research Data Management Specialist. Book an appointment with Isaac or another member of the Sherman Centre Team.

Details: This virtual workshop will be recorded. The recording will be posted to the Sherman Centre's Online Learning Catalogue.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Certificate Eligibility: This workshop is eligible for the Sherman Centre's certificate program. For more information, visit scds.ca/certificate-program. It is also eligible for the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities. To learn more, visit ccdhhn.ca or contact scds@mcmaster.ca.

Data Management Plan Bootcamp

May 13, 2025

1:00 pm TO 4:00 pm

Data Management Plans (DMPs) are both incredibly helpful research tools and increasingly required for grants but it can hard to know how to complete a Data Management Plan if it’s your first time. If you're in the process of creating a DMP, either for a grant application or for your own research, join RDM Services for this afternoon session. By the end of the session, you’ll understand what the major components of a DMP are and walk away with a potentially completed plan for your own research!

This session is especially relevant if you’re in the beginning stages of a research project or streamlining best practices for your research team. Come on your own, send your research staff, or bring your whole research group. This 3-hour session will briefly introduce the different sections of a DMP and all the important things to consider as you build it. The RDM services team will provide tailored guidance as you write your plan on site, and we'll have some light snacks and refreshments to keep you going. Come away with a clear path forward or even a finished DMP!

Let us know if you're solo or joining as a research team - we'll make sure you space to work together.

Learning Outcomes: Identify a strong data management plan compared to a weak response, section by section. Produce a solid outline of their own DMP.

Details: This workshop will not be recorded.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Certificate Eligibility: This workshop is eligible for the Sherman Centre's certificate program. For more information, visit scds.ca/certificate-program. It is also eligible for the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities. To learn more, visit ccdhhn.ca or contact scds@mcmaster.ca.

Data Deposit Bootcamp

May 20, 2025

1:00 pm TO 4:00 pm

Data deposit and data sharing are increasingly recognized as best practice to support open research, reproducibility, research integrity, collaboration, and more. Disciplines, funders, and journals are increasingly requiring researchers to share or deposit data. But how do you get your dataset ready for sharing? What's the best repository to share it in? If you have a dataset that's ready for deposit or that you'd like to get deposit ready, join RDM Services for this workshop.

By the end of this 3-hour session, you will be able to:

• Identify a target data repository

• Organize and create documentation for your dataset,

• Define your metadata, and

• (Potentially) begin the deposit process.

If you have a dataset ready to submit, bring it along! No dataset, no problems--we have a sample dataset you can use to go through the process and learn how to deposit data.

With light snacks and refreshments to sustain you and specialists on-hand to answer any questions, you'll end this session with ready-to-submit data...or submitted or even published data! Graduate Students who have finished their thesis work are encouraged to attend!

Learning Outcomes: Outline documentation and metadata best practices and identify the appropriate repository for their dataset. Develop a README file that thoroughly describes the dataset being deposited. Organize datasets in preperation for data deposit, including metadata entry.

Details: This workshop will not be recorded.

Facilitator Bio: 

Isaac Pratt (he/him) is a research scientist by training and has a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. He leverages nearly a decade of interdisciplinary research experience to help support students, staff, and faculty. His expertise lies in questions surrounding data storage, security, planning, archival, and sharing. Isaac also provides support and curation services for McMaster Dataverse. His other interests include reproducible research methods, open science, and data science.

Danica Evering holds expansive experience with research support, education, project management, advocacy, and knowledge translation; with fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development. Danica supports students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. With an MA in Media Studies from Concordia, they are interested in fostering RDM within curious scholars and disciplines.

Certificate Eligibility: This workshop is eligible for the Sherman Centre's certificate program. For more information, visit scds.ca/certificate-program. It is also eligible for the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities. To learn more, visit ccdhhn.ca or contact scds@mcmaster.ca.