In February 2023, Ithaka S+R launched Building Campus Strategies for Coordinated Data Support, a project designed to help universities create viable strategies for delivering and sustaining research data service across campus. The project began with a national landscape inventory and local cohort inventories of existing data services, followed by interviews with researchers about their research data support needs and use. Last spring, the project transitioned into an action-oriented phase, beginning with workshops that encouraged participants to use design thinking to conceptualize new approaches or solutions to service delivery. Following the workshops, cohort teams revisited some of the design thinking activities on their own campuses and honed in on a tangible idea or solution to implement.

Over the course of the summer, we met with each team to discuss their progress. We explored what ideas they are implementing, how they are putting their plans into action, strengths and challenges in their project, and strategies they might employ moving forward.

Throughout our discussions, themes remained consistent across the cohort teams, whether we were talking with teams from large public research universities, private ivy league institutions, liberal arts colleges, or emerging research institutions. For example, a common question was how to align service delivery with researcher workflow to ensure that researchers receive support precisely when they need it rather than too late or too early. Another question that continues to motivate teams is how to make discovery and navigation of services more intuitive and aligned with researchers’ specific needs. There was also continued shared interest in improving awareness among researchers about the existence of data services specifically provided by the library.

For all teams, the library is the traditional center of gravity for research data services and has been leading efforts to improve campus coordination of services. There is still strong emphasis, however, on the critical importance for cross-campus input, collaborative decision making, and shared organizational responsibility for research data service going forward. Many teams reflect this by involving representatives from units across campus in the project and/or forming cross-campus interest groups to support and inform the implementation of their ideas. Nearly every team now includes representatives from at least the library, the office of research/sponsored projects, and IT or research computing, with some also incorporating members from research compliance and communications. Indeed, a clear consensus is emerging that research data service is a multidimensional and cross-campus endeavor that requires diverse expertise.

Despite these commonalities, the types of challenges teams described varied by institutional type, which impacts available resources, campus culture, cross-unit relationships and the nature of campus workflows. Teams working at larger research universities, for example, often face legacy problems such as bureaucratic labyrinths, hardened departmental silos, and entrenched cultural attitudes that can hinder collaboration, making forging new relationships and workflows across campus difficult. Smaller institutions reported a different set of challenges. They struggle with a lack of procedural consistency, fewer resources, and an overall lack of awareness among their campus community about the strategic importance and availability of research data service resources. Although these institutions can be more nimble, often starting from scratch rather than retrofitting existing structures, the lack of consistency presents its own problems.

The solutions that institutions in our cohort are pursuing tend to fall into two major categories: improving web presence and user experience; and outreach, communication, and engagement campaigns.

Improved web presence and user experience

Websites are often the primary gateway for understanding campus resources, and are key for communicating research data service availability and delivery. Yet, many cohort teams identified their campus research data service web presence as incomplete, outdated, and confusing. Consequently, the most common initiative among the cohort has been to begin to create a cohesive, comprehensive, and centralized web presence that allows researchers (and administrators) to better understand what and where services are available on campus.

Cohort teams are taking different approaches to this and are at various stages of progress, with every institution working on website redesign tailoring the scope of their plans to their specific institutional context. Many are designing a “one-stop shop” website that includes links to all research data services offered across campus. Taking the inventory as a starting place, these teams are gathering information about services offered and working with a cross-campus steering committee to assess how best to present the information on a centralized website. Some institutions are also incorporating a concierge feature to allow users to filter their search based on variables such as discipline, department, and type of research data. Others are focusing on creating a data storage finder, with a few universities citing Cornell’s data storage page as an exemplary model.

The library usually—though not always—is the host for these new research data service websites. One institution is hosting the website through the research office, another plans to have three interconnected websites hosted by the library, the research office, and IT, and a number of teams have yet to decide which unit will take on hosting responsibilities.

Outreach, communication, and engagement

Recognizing the futility of mass emails and the need for more effective forms of communication with researchers, many teams have chosen to focus on outreach and engagement strategies before tackling website (re)design. Most are integrating information about research data support services into various faculty and student orientations, administrative programs, and targeted campus events throughout the year. Other notable ideas include a “Research Fest” that would make the discovery of services both informative and enjoyable, a rotating library exhibit of successful research projects that have benefited from research data services, and workshops held jointly with centers for faculty excellence or teaching and learning.

Other teams are adopting an all-hands-on-deck strategy, or what one team aptly described as the “kitchen sink” method. These efforts involve closely coordinating between the library and the research office and leveraging various channels—social media, blogs, tabling at events—to achieve comprehensive outreach and engagement across the campus. Finally, some teams have begun building a “Data Champions” or “Data Ambassadors” program, where graduate students or post docs serve as ambassadors to promote data services and assist their peers. These initiatives not only help in spreading awareness about the services but also provide valuable professional development opportunities for the participants, many of whom are likely to enter the job market soon.

What’s next

As teams move from idea to implementation, there is widespread agreement that these projects are just one part of a larger shift in how research support is conceptualized and delivered. The ultimate goal is not just to improve the delivery of data services, but to help in transforming research culture by making the support available to researchers more visible, accessible, and integrated into their natural workflow.

Yet, even as we heard exciting and innovative plans for improved research data service coordination, many teams are also struggling with inadequate staff capacity and lack of consistency due to rapid staff turnover at all levels of university administration and campus units. Open positions often take a long time to fill, and as the demand for specialized data support grows across the academic research enterprise, institutions face increased competition for these critical roles. The ability to carry out and sustain the services needed for a robust research enterprise will depend significantly on how well institutions can maintain the staffing and human infrastructure required to deliver the services.

In the coming months, Ithaka S+R will share findings from our analysis of interviews with researchers about their data support needs and practices. In early 2025, cohort teams will have a chance to share their project outcomes and strategies with each other at our final cohort meeting.