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Scholars Portal Dataverse Institutional Contacts Meeting

May 28, 2020

Kaitlin Newson

Meghan Goodchild

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Agenda

  • Housekeeping;
  • Service updates
  • Upgrade to 4.19 review
  • Review results of usability testing by the UX lab at the University of Toronto
  • Upcoming events
  • Community Q&A

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Welcome!

  • 54 institutions now subscribing to the service
  • Welcome to:
    • Vancouver Island University
    • Royal Roads University
    • University of Northern British Columbia

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Upgrade to 4.19

  • Successful upgrade on April 22 with no downtime
  • Published blogpost with details
  • Some of the new features in this upgrade include:
    • Improved descriptive text and internationalization on the login page
    • Expiry dates for API tokens
    • Allowing for MakeDataCount metrics to be collected (but not yet displayed in the front-end)
    • Moving the institution name to the front of the subject line for support emails
    • New Dataset Author Identifiers options in metadata (DAI, ResearcherID, Scopus)
    • User notifications and emails are now sent when a tabular file ingest completes (e.g., xlsx, csv, sav)
    • Accessibility improvements for keyboard support and screenreader users

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Upgrade to 4.19

  • Bug fixes in this release, including:
    • Fixed thumbnail display issues on the first page load
    • Resolved issue where French characters in SPSS files may be garbled on ingest

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Other updates

  • Shibboleth (single sign-on) accounts are redirected to institutional Dataverse
  • Shibboleth groups updated

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Usability Report - Introduction/Methods

  • UX lab from the University of Toronto conducted usability tests on the Scholars Portal Dataverse platform (November 2019 to April 2020)
  • Participants
    • Recruited primary users (i.e., researchers looking to deposit data)
    • Either previously deposited data and/or interested in depositing data in near future
    • Unfamiliar with Dataverse platform
    • 9 users (graduate students and faculty members) at UofT
  • 3 main tasks:
    • Finding the site and browsing
    • Uploading a dataset with relevant metadata in the University of Toronto Dataverse
    • Editing the dataset and managing permissions
  • Approach
    • Think-Aloud Protocol, Lookback software, Recordings, Post-task questionnaire

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Usability Report - Results

  • 2 critical, 9 moderate, and 3 minor usability issues identified
  • SP has divided into 3 target areas for improvements:
    • Underlying Dataverse platform (shared with IQSS Harvard)
    • Scholars Portal Dataverse implementation
    • Institutional Dataverses

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Results - suggestions for IQSS Harvard

  • Adding metadata
    • Form relatively easy to complete
    • Did not expect additional metadata page with new fields after uploading dataset
    • Suggestion: compile forms and make easier to navigate through different metadata blocks
  • Use of the term “dataverse” throughout interface
    • Even after testing, some users still uncertain about meaning
    • Suggestion: Provide an easily accessible tooltip

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Results - considerations for SP Dataverse

Log-In page

  • Users did not know that they needed to log in to upload data (7/9 expected to find an upload button prior to logging in)
  • Confusion between the institutional drop-down menu and the “other options”
  • Unaware that they could click on the institutional logo (tried continue button instead)
  • Suggestions
    • Add additional helpful text to guide users
    • Investigate how to improve logo/continue button
    • Improve headings of user guide so users can easily navigate to sections (e.g., creating an account, uploading data, etc).

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Takeaways for Institutions - Description

Add descriptions to orient the user to the institutional space:

  • Explain what the page is about (e.g., Data repository for University X)
  • Explain relationship between SP Dataverse and the institutional dataverse (for users that land directly on the institution)
  • How to deposit (e.g., need to login to see add data button)
  • Who to contact with issues
  • Explain featured dataverses if included, etc.
  • Examples:

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Takeaways for institutions - Number of admins

  • Consider number of admins in the institutional dataverse if there are many
    • Users see all admins due to inherited permissions
    • Results show that users feel intimidated or put off by the number of users that have access to their data.
    • They also may not know who the admins are.

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Affinity diagram

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Other updates

  • Webinars and Presentations
    • Portage Tech Tools Showcase on June 16 at 1PM (TBA)
      • Meghan presenting on the Data Curation Tool
    • Dataverse Community Meeting held remotely on June 17-19
      • Kaitlin co-chair for External Tools session
      • Meghan co-chair for Remote Storage/Large Datasets session
      • DVN Metadata group presenting in Flexible Metadata Session 1
  • New documentation/outreach

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Other updates

  • OpenAIRE covid-19 gateway
    • “Aims to aggregate COVID-19 records (publications-data-software-other research outcomes), link them together and provide a single access point for their discovery and navigation”
    • FRDR team is working on sending a compliant feed of FRDR’s harvested metadata, including SP Dataverses
    • All metadata will also be discoverable in their main portal
  • Shared Dataverse resources page

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Supporting ongoing research

At a glance…

  • 7 covid-19 related datasets published
  • 42 datasets published in the past month

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Community Q&A

  • Questions, comments, or things you would like to discuss with the community?
  • Get in touch: dataverse@scholarsportal.info
  • Next meeting:
    • June 25, 2020 at 1PM EST
    • Note: No meetings in July/August; Resuming in September