image by pennstatelive CC BY-NC

We are excited to announce that the Roundtable discussion on Friday, February 15, 2013 at 4:00 p.m. will double as the first focus group for our study titled “Collecting ‘real-life’ success stories and cautionary tales for data management engagement and education.”

The purpose of this study is to collect stories that illustrate concepts and best practices for scientific data management. From these stories, as part of our effort to facilitate dialog about data management and sharing, we will prepare a collection of narratives that can be woven into the data management education and outreach products created by DataONE and published as blog posts on the DataONE Coffee House blog. Here is a link to the topics and questions we would like to discuss during the Roundtable.

Please take some time to look them over and hopefully you all have some stories to share!

We want to emphasize that if you attend the Roundtable, you are not automatically a participant in our study. You should in no way feel obligated to participate as a research subject, and you will have the opportunity to let us know whether or not you wish to be involved in the research by signing or not signing a consent form. (If you decline to sign the consent form, we will not transcribe anything you say during the conversation, and all audio recordings will be permanently deleted once the transcriptions have been made.) That being said, however, we would greatly appreciate your participation and it would be very beneficial for the success of our project. If you decide that you wish to be an official participant and allow us to use your story(ies) for our study, you will be asked to sign a consent form (20130209Consent Form.NCEAS) before the start of the Roundtable.

Thank you and see you on Friday!