A Survey to Assist Researchers
Retraction notice to A model study into the effects of light and temperature on the degradation of fingerprint constituents [Science and Justice, 54 (2014) 346 - 350]
This article has been retracted at the request of the authors. The authors identified an inconsistency in the accepted paper and were unable to reproduce the average values that were used for the graphs and tables in the paper, due to the loss of the raw data. This, in turn, means that the authors cannot fulfil the demands of the Association of Dutch Universities and the Royal Dutch Academy of Science in respect to their ethical and research data standards.
Have you ever lost research data? Did a graduate student leave with the data? Did a postdoc have his own method of organizing data, which he did not share before leaving? Or were you one of those researchers who had to deal with pipes bursting all over campus due to the frigid temperatures and lost your data because it was on your laptop and backed up on a hard drive sitting next to the laptop.
What happened when you first came to campus? How difficult was it to learn of all the resources on campus needed for your research? Were you able to access the software required or someone to assist in developing a database? Were you provided with sufficient server space? And since your research involves multiple large datasets, how do you go about hiring someone qualified to manage the data.
Are you collaborating with multiple research groups across the country? Did you sit down with all your partners to discuss data management before initiating the project? If you did not, then down the line you may find out that the terminology used by each partner was different, units of measure were recorded differently, the spreadsheets and databases not interoperable and it is going to take a bit of time to clean up the mess.
Sound familiar? Do you have additional research issues to add to the list?
Help us assist you with your research by participating in the survey that the Libraries (Marriott Library, Eccles Health Sciences Library, and Faust Law Library) and Research Computing & Center for High Performance Computing have developed to determine the issues researchers on campus are facing - in all disciplines. Please, pour yourself a cup of coffee first, then get comfy in front of your laptop, tablet or phone and answer the questions carefully. If someone interrupts, don’t worry we will save your answers until you return to complete the survey. And thank you for helping us assist you.