Below you find four cases concerning true stories about acquisition. In some cases a certain part in the process is highlighted; in other cases the underlying process in itself is also given attention. 
The underlying message of all cases is the same: Get moving and make a difference. Every contribution, large or small, will help to shape the end result. Use each other's expertise and work together. During the course we will make such a step together. 

1. TU Delft

Hitting the road and being prepared 

"Coincidence does play a role, 
seeing it and using it to your advantage is key"

                          
                    Anke Versteeg, TUDelft 

“Acquisition often works best if it isn't too explicit. Therefore, be prepared and know (for example when you already have to visit someone in the faculty) which scientist have datasets which are of interest to 3TU.Datacentrum. To give an example: recently I was visiting the faculty of civil engineering to trace a PhD with whom we couldn't get contact with via phone of mail anymore. His room was taken by new PhD students and they told me that he had left the country for doing long-term research abroad. They gave me his mobile phone number. That was a stroke of luck because once I had contacted him, he was very prepared to add links to his datasets to enrich his dissertation. (I forgot to mention that sometimes you have to be very persistent to establish contact). 

At the same corridor, I knew, a chief-editor of a known Open Access Journal has his room. We would really like him to share his datasets with us. And we would appreciate any effort from his side to stimulate contributing authors to his Open Access Journal to do the same. The door to his secretary's room was open so I went in quickly to inform whether I could talk to her boss about this topic which could lead to an even better exposure of his journal. As it seemed, he had exactly ten minutes until the start of an important meeting. And in these ten minutes he was very interested in sharing his data. The main trigger was my argument that data publication is in fact a deepening of Open Access publishing. He immediately indicated that we could contact his publisher right away (we are in the process of following up on this, so I will keep you posted …) 

To go short, don't push your message: be interested in what the scientist has to tell; what is his/her research about; know what you are talking about before you hit the road in order to be prepared to take advantage of any coincidence which passes while you are walking by.” 

2. UT

Experiences with supporting data management

"The improvement
came from within
the group"

                          Maarten van Bentum, UT

"Need for data management support is often latent. When you ask about it, data management doesn't seem a problem at first. But when you keep on asking questions, remarks about current practices in data management surely can be made. Like the wish to be able to share research data in a more efficient way within a research group. 

The group Water Engineering and Management (WEM) is a good example. After an introductory conversation with the professor, she proposed to take a closer look at current practices in data management. She wanted to see whether improvement could be made at low costs. These activities were carried out as a pilot within the context of the SURF project CARDS.

When I held the first conversation with the person responsible for data management at WEM, he hardly seemed to see the necessity of any improvements. Current data management practices were limited to collecting dataset at a central disk, without any documentation corresponding to the dataset and without the possibility to search your way through the data. The data were kept (although not systematically) but they were hardly reused within the group. 

We decided to make an inventory of all ideas about data management within the group. Interviews with PhD students and research managers revealed that PhD students hardly recognized the need for (internal) sharing of their data. The research managers did realise the added value. In agreement with one of them a firm idea surfaced for implementing a tool for internal data management. The costs for this improvement were limited to purchasing a new PC on which the tool could be installed. The management of this tool will be assigned to the person currently responsible for the group's data management. 

What are the ingredients which make this case successful? First, the search for improvement of current data management practices emerged from within the group. Second, the change was modest in size and costs. Many research groups have tight budgets and they will not get any larger in the coming years. Last, the intensive cooperation with the current data manager of the group made the case succesful. 
On the one hand you are the one bringing in knowledge and experience when you are supporting data management; on the other hand you are the one who advises about realistic steps to be made in a process of changing current data management practices."

3. TU Delft 

"Follow the five Ps': 
Plan and be Professional, Precise, 
Persistent and especially Patient"

                                                Alenka Princic, TUDelft

"I believe that acquisition is largely dependent on thorough and good planning for both a bottom-up and a top-down approach. When I started to explore the world of research datasets at the faculty of Civil Engineering I first informed the 'guys on the top' about my plans. I thought: "If they instruct their younger fellow researchers that they should store their research data in a data portal like 3TU.Datacentrum, then my bottom-up acquisition will be more efficient. My belief was based on my own experiences in microbiology research where a culture of sharing data such as gene sequences is well established.

One can argue that the data producers should have the right to judge form themselves what will happen to their datasets and how they will deal with storing and sharing their data. Well, that remains to be seen. Most of the university research data are to some extent produced with public funding. So to whom do the data actually belong and who can make decisions on how the data will be handled? In the end it should be the public having a say. But what this 'public' needs is advice from experts.  

So, I made a tactic and concrete plan to approach all chairs of the departments of the faculty Civil Engineering and their secretaries. I approached them by mail introducing myself briefly when needed and explaining the benefits of the services of 3TU.Datacentrum. I thought: "You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so my mail better be good". Hoping for enthusiastic reactions, I waited patiently. And I waited a bit longer, still patiently. Naturally, then there was time for a diplomatic reminder. This worked in once case but not for the remaining five. But what had also been a part of my plan was finding a moment when the department was getting together for an informal chat. That was the moment when I 'coincidently' passed by. So I said: "Hi, how are you doing? You must be the head of the department Traffic and Planning, right? I recognize your face from another occasion but it is great to meet you in person. By the way, I sent you an email two weeks ago which I am sure is interesting for you and your group. It is about research data management. Seeing your busy agenda I do not want to waste your precious time. I am actually on my way to another appointment now, so I suggest that I forward the mail once more and we can then discuss it further? An hour later, there was a pleasant email in my inbox, stating: "Dear Alenka. Thank you for the email, that sounds very good indeed! We have such datasets and are certainly interested. Perhaps you can first make an appointment with our ICT/data specialist. On the basis of his/your findings we can then do a bit of PR in the department and see how we further could use your facilities."

An important aspect of acquisition is to be aware of not waisting the precious time of researchers. They are fast thinkers so one has to get to the point with the right message quickly. And besides planning and being professional one should also be patient. No immediate reaction does not mean that the work has been done for nothing.    

Half a year later I started up a mini-symposium to attract researchers, do some branding and inform about 3TU.Datacentrum. Also, this was part of the plan: to get back to the same people with a similar subject and wake up in them the thought "Yes, I heard about this before". Once heard is not enough. It needs repetition and name dropping at several levels simultaneously. I guess I can call it a PPPPP principle: Plan and be Professional, Precise, Persistent and especially Patient".  

4. TU Eindhoven 

“Acquiring datasets 
sometimes is a 
matter of 
perseverance”

Leon Osinski, TU Eindhoven

The research group Architecture of Information Systems (AIS) from TU/e-professor Wil van der Aalst seemed like a good candidate to approach for the storage and publication of datasets at 3TU.Datacentrum. Since about ten years this group addresses ‘process mining’, in which flows of information are studied which are captured in information systems through so called event logs. Event logs are the research data of process mining, a data intensive and empirical research area. It seemed to qualify very well for 3TU.Datacentrum. Also, I knew some people at this research group and this made the barrier for approaching them smaller from my and their side. 

The first contacts with the group of Wil van der Aalst concerning 3TU.Datacentrum date from fall 2009. These contacts eventually resulted in an invitation to hold a presentation about 3TU.Datacentrum during the weekly Wednesday morning meeting of the AIS-researchers. This meeting took place in February 2010. Giving a presentation during such a meeting often works very well and is efficient. In one hour you reach about 15 persons who would have gotten together anyway. This was the case here too: after the meeting concrete arrangements were made for follow-up. 

The problem of AIS wasn't that they didn't want to share or publish their datasets. On the contrary. They were playing with the thoughts of setting up their own repository for quite some time. But they didn't have the manpower to get this going. 3TU.Datacentrum could make the difference by paying for two student assistants. Their tasks included the determination of standard and specific metadata elements of event logs, the mapping of standard metadata to Datacite format and the visualization of metadata in 3TU.Datacentrum. Technical staff from 3TU.Datacentrum were required to complete the latter task. In august the work of the student assistants and technical staff was finished. Still it took until October 2010 before the first event log was published in 3TU.Datacentrum.

Sometimes, acquiring datasets requires perseverance. It took about a year before the first event logs were published in 3TU.Datacentrum. For the bigger part this was caused by the complexity of the collection of data. A lot of customization had to be done, for example in the area of metadata. A collection of data brings extra responsibilities for a data librarian. You have to make sure that data keep coming. So you have to maintain your relationship with the research group. 

Luckily we have examples of Eindhoven datasets where the acquisition didn't take that long. The datasets by Frederico Toschi for example. He contacted me in response to an article about 3TU.Datacentrum in a university newspaper. 

In the case of the event logs it was essential that 3TU.Datacentrum was capable and able to deliver tailored solutions. Also the financial support of 3TU.Datacentrum in paying for the work of two student assistants was crucial." 

More

Want to have a look outside the 3TU's? 
You might want to read Ten Tales of Drivers and Barriers in Data Sharing¹, which have arisen from the ODE project.  

 ^{1. Alliance for Permanent Access. (2011). The ODE project. Ten Tales of Drivers and Barriers in Data Sharing. Retrieved 15-12-2011 from www.alliancepermanentaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/10/7836_ODE_brochure_final.pdf}