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This newsletter (issued five times a year) informs you about the services, tools and best practices of the University Library and Information Technology. It also keeps you up to date about the latest developments in the VU Research Data Support programme. If you would like to receive this newsletter, please subscribe.
How the VU Research Data Support programme helps researchers
'The VU Research Data Support programme helps researchers to be transparent and open where possible, and ensures that their data are well protected if necessary', says VU Amsterdam Professor of Innovation & Organisation Hans Berends (chair of the programme's steering committee). He explains what has been realised so far and on which projects the programme is working.
Nine basic steps to pseudonymize your research data
When doing research involving human subjects, you have to ensure the protection of your data. There are various technical and organizational measures you can take to protect the privacy of your participants, one of them being pseudonymization. Jolien Scholten, one of the specialists working at the VU Research Data Management Support Desk, recently participated in a national task group on pseudonymization. One of the results is a flyer which presents nine basic steps for pseudonymization, including how to handle key files generated by the pseudonymization process.
Think twice before you begin collecting data for your research
When it was time to create a Data Management Plan for her NWO doctoral research project, Heleen Blommers sought advice from the VU Research Data Management Support Desk. ‘Jolien Scholten from the Support Desk gave me a bunch of useful tips. Even though I had already put a great deal of thought into how to manage my research data before I started, I still ran into some unexpected aspects. It's important to allow a lot of time for this and to seek advice from experts.’
Did you know that Information Technology has a domain team specifically for research-related IT questions? The Domain Team Research is a virtual team that takes responsibility for the entire customer process on behalf of IT, led by relationship manager Erik Koedam. Researchers or support staff looking for new or altered IT-related products and services to support their research projects can call on the Domain Team Research for anything from advice to completely customized solutions. The team works closely together with the engineers at IT For Research.
Bright ideas by sharing - How to speed up the learning process in research
Wouldn’t it be nice if research could be done better, more efficiently and easily, faster and cheaper? And wouldn’t it be fantastic if the insights and results generated by research could be made even more valuable to society by combining data sets and methods of analysis from different researchers? This is the vision shared by Ricarda Weiland, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, and Ewa Miedzobrodzka, PhD candidate in Media Psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences.
