On August 13, 2025 we heard from some of our Research Data Stewardship Initiative (RDSI) Community of Practice members about a data tool or process.
“Smartsheet Tools for Efficient Process” - Emily Arents, Project Manager, ICPSR ICPSR Business and Collection Development (BCD) recently launched a system using Smartsheet to manage and coordinate support for new proposal applications. During this presentation, I would briefly discuss the tools employed by this new system for improved communication and efficiency. These include an approval process requiring multiple approvers, integration with Slack, repeated reminders and update requests, cross-sheet formulas and reports for customized views and metrics, and automated archival.
“The NACDA Portal - Comparisons within and Across Longitudinal Series” - Kathryn Lavender, NACDA Data Project Manager, ICPSR This presentation would provide a brief introduction to the NACDA Portal. NACDA is the aging archive within ICPSR, and has supported and hosted research related to aging populations for more than 45 years. Over the last few years, we have been working with the metadata standard, DDI-Lifecycle, to add value to select longitudinal data collections in an effort to make the data more FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable). This presentation will highlight a tool that exists for comparing longitudinal data series and is based in DDI-Lifecycle.
“A Brief Introduction to OpenRefine” - Mike Shallcross, Sr. Associate Archivist, ICPSR OpenRefine, a free, open-source tool designed to help users clean, structure, and enrich messy data. It is especially useful for librarians and archivists working with metadata or large datasets, as it enables efficient batch editing, standardization, and the reconciliation of data against controlled vocabularies or external authorities like Wikidata, GeoNames, ROR, etc.
“Data management planning without a specific funder” - Rachel Woodbrook, Data Curation Specialist for Humanities, Social Sciences, & Medicine, Michigan Publishing, Deep Blue Repositories and Research Data Services (pre-recorded) This talk will demonstrate how to access, use, and export from DMPTool a number of new funder-agnostic templates for creating Data Management Plans. These templates (for quantitative and qualitative projects, as well as for labs/research groups) were built for University of Michigan researchers and are available within the DMPTool online platform, as well as downloadable file versions in Deep Blue Documents.