Introduction¶
Welcome to the Biodiversity Genomic Data Management Hub! We recognise that data management for biodiversity genomic research projects can be a challenge, particularly for researchers entering this space, and you are likely to have many questions as you proceed on your journey.
The primary goal of this Hub is to support biodiversity genomics researchers in developing good data management practices that embody the FAIR and CARE Guiding Principles.
Good practice versus best practice
Based on our lived experiences working on biodiversity genomics projects, we recognise there are different standards of data management. We acknowledge that achieving best practices (i.e., those described in the community guidelines and standards we strive towards implementing) is aspirational, and may not always be practicable within the constraints of a research project due to external factors (see Personas). Instead, we encourage researchers to pursue ‘good practices’ as a stepping stone on the journey towards best practices.
From our collective experience, one lesson is clear—that any data management is better than no data management. We strongly encourage any incremental improvements to data management by individuals, as capacity allows. Rather than lamenting past inadequacies, we encourage forward-focussed data management solutions, as described in the associated Modules.
In this Hub we leverage our personal data management experiences to describe four user experience personas that illustrate some of the challenges associated with biodiversity genomic data management across the research ecosystem. We use these personas to demonstrate a diversity of the realistic considerations, compromises, and questions that arise from biodiversity genomic data management.
While real life is not typically this tidy, we hope that you may see some of your own experiences reflected through a combination of these personas. You may find that you relate most strongly to one persona, but we encourage you to peruse all four personas to gain a breadth of perspectives across career stages and roles.
Who are we?
We are a cross-institutional, interdisciplinary, multi-career stage collaborative team based in Aotearoa New Zealand. This team includes biodiversity genomics researchers, institutional and national eResearch and libraries staff, and researchers with experience in being responsive to Indigenous considerations pertaining to culturally significant biodiversity genomic data, both as Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars. Together we have extensive experience in overseeing biodiversity genomic research projects, curating and managing biodiversity genomic datasets including those with cultural significance, developing project-specific data management plans (DMPs), and providing data management solutions to research groups. We have lived experience with the caveats of applying data management theory to real-life research situations.
Based on the questions that arise from these personas, we direct you to Modules that examine these challenges in more detail and provide resources and solutions to help you on your data management journey. While these modules are non-exhaustive, they will be regularly updated as new solutions come to light.
Through this Hub, we aim to empower the biodiversity genomics community to minimise risks and maximise research impact now and into the future. We encourage researchers to view data management as a behaviour intrinsic to the research process, and to adopt a mindset of adaptability to the various hurdles you may encounter along the way.
We welcome feedback, along with the contribution of resource suggestions and additional module topics for inclusion via the GitHub Issues page associated with the Hub.
Citation & Licensing
Biodiversity Genomic Data Management Hub material is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0). This Hub is intended as a resource that sits alongside the publication Journeying towards best practice data management in biodiversity genomics. If you refer to the publication or Hub in your research or teaching, we request that you include a link to the Hub, and the citation:
Forsdick, N. J., Wold, J. R., Angelo, A., Bissey, F., Hart, J., Head, M., Liggins, L., Senanayake, D., & Steeves, T. E. (2023). Journeying towards best practice data management in biodiversity genomics. Molecular Ecology Resources. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13880.