In 2013, the University of California, Berkeley Library, Research IT, and Berkeley IT collaborated to identify and benchmark research data support needs. That work was part of the Research & Academic Engagement (RAE) Benchmarking project, which was a campus effort to understand how Berkeley compared to its peers in terms of services offered across the areas of research, teaching, and learning technology support. The RDM Program was formed as a result of that project and has been jointly managed by the UC Berkeley Library and Research IT since the program began in 2015.
In addition to the RAE benchmarking project, the development of the RDM Program was informed by changes in federal policy, a primary one being the 2013 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memo, titled "Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research". This memo directed agencies exceeding $100 million in annual research and development spending to develop plans for research data from federally funded research to be made more widely available. This policy was a major driver in libraries shifting their role from primarily providing access to published research to actively managing, sharing, and curating both publications and the underlying data.
At its core, the RDM Program provides discipline agnostic support for research data with an emphasis on the secure management of data throughout the research lifecycle. The Library’s role in the partnership is focused on data management planning and data sharing post-research as well as providing an approach to asking questions of researchers to better understand the requirements and needs of research data. Research IT’s role is focused on understanding research workflows, how data will be actively handled during the course of research, and managing a variety of compute and storage platforms. The combination of these areas of expertise allows for a holistic approach to managing research data.
In the years since the RDM Program began, similar partnerships - between libraries and campus information technology units - have been established at other academic institutions. These initiatives are a recognition that no one campus unit acts alone in support of research at academic institutions and that cultivating connections and collaborations allows for adaptability and resilience in an ever-changing research landscape.
To learn more about the RDM program visit https://researchdata.berkeley.edu