Research Ethics Boards, Librarians, and Data Management Plans: Issues and Pathways of Support : Home

Data management plans (DMPs) are a complex confluence of discipline and institution data norms and processes, multi- and varied regulatory and policy expectations, and social and cultural sovereignties across the research lifecycle. A research ethics boards’ (REB) regulatory function is to protect all human participants and provide a long-term view of the research proposal. Traditionally they have navigated data management issues with a combination of local practice, and institutional oversight; expectations are largely conveyed by the experience of the ethics submission process. DMPs has illuminated institutional policy gaps and non-encoded local data management practices, presenting challenges to researchers, REB members and officers, and supporting institutional units. Such challenges include the lack of standards at multiple level and constituencies; the inability to assess DMP quality due to the absence of a definition of quality; inconsistency between submitted DMP to protocol submission responses; and considerations beyond the primary data collection to deidentified data and secondary uses of it. This study has two aims: to explore Canadian librarians and human ethics board chairs or officers’ experiences in data management plans (DMPs); and to solicit community input, using the research World Cafe method, for support direction to both REBs and librarian partners which would be reflective of the Canadian policy environment.

Phase 1 -

• a single semi-structured audio-recorded 1.5 hour interview with the PI using UM Teams or Zoom

Phase 2 -

• research World Cafe workshop to be delivered at 2025 Canadian conferences (more information to be provided when available)

Phase 1 Inclusion Criteria:

• You are: a librarian or a person with a MLIS/MIS degree (Masters in Library and Information Sciences); employed at a Canadian research institution; job responsibilities include data management support; currently or in the recent past have a relationship with a human research ethics board (e.g. reviewer, consultant/expert, service support)
• OR
• You are: a faculty/librarian/staff member currently (or in recent past) serving as a research ethics board chair or officer; employed at a Canadian research institution
• Speak and read English
• Willing to be audio-recorded

Phase 1 Exclusion Criteria:

• Individuals from the University of Manitoba 

Phase 1 -

• participants will have pseudonyms assigned by PI
• transcripts and results anonymized; the participants will be quoted and referenced by pseudonym or general reference (e.g. 'data librarian', 'ethics officer', 'ethics chair')
• institution and demographics aggregated

Phase 2 -

• participants' response anonymous/anonymized

• Data will be deposited in UM Dataverse (Borealis) and publicly accessible:
  • Phase 1 & 2 anonymized transcripts
  • Phase 2 notes (anonymized)
• Presented at conferences that reach Canadian research ethics and librarian communities
• Journal article publications