[LTER-im] How do you prepare for site reviews?

[Sarah Elmendorf]

Hi!
Our review went a bit differently than I had expected. I do not know if this was specific to the team or this is a more general shift in LTER review policy, but for NWT we were not allowed to have any separate discussions with the IM review person. I was anticipating them wanting to poke around the nuts and bolts more, but we stayed pretty high-level because all the material/discussion was with the review team as a whole.

As with Gastil, I was pretty upfront about any challenges we were/are having. I directly addressed how recent changes in our IM system were targeted to address weaknesses identified in the proposal review, which I think was appreciated (although I did not get the sense that the review team had actually seen these reviews before).

Perhaps because I did NOT deep-dive into the weeds of our IM system, a lot of the material/questions focused more on data literacy in our team of researchers, postdocs and students, how to improve data use, etc. This is something I’ve been charged with working on at NWT in addition to data management. I’m not sure if that’s a common division of labor across LTER sites, though.

Overall, the panel reviews were pretty positive for the IM component. HTH and I'm happy to share materials.

Sarah

From: im <im-bounces at lists.lternet.edu> On Behalf Of Gastil Gastil-Buhl
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2020 2:07 PM
To: Marty Downs <downs at nceas.ucsb.edu>
Cc: LTER IM <im at lternet.edu>
Subject: Re: [LTER-im] How do you prepare for site reviews?

Hi Marty and site IMs,

Preparation for the MCR LTER mid-term review really began soon after the grant cycle began, or you could even say it began right after the previous mid-term review. Datasets obviously are ongoing and not done at the last minute; having said that, I was glad I announced a deadline for any new datasets well ahead of time. The preparation of presentation materials began about 3 months prior, with many drafts and lots of feedback from within our site and IM colleagues.

The only advice that may not be obvious is BE OPEN with your reviewer. We did not hide the challenges and complexities, the frustrations with how we would like things to work (such as data citation in journals) versus reality. If your reviewer is an IM themselves, or that type of role outside of LTER, they may share these challenges and appreciate such a discussion. Our reviewer's data system is also a DataONE member node so we discussed the challenges involved with that, for example. Our reviewer was impressed with how we track the current status of all the datasets, including categories such as "cancelled" because they could appreciate the reality. We pointed out a dataset which did not have new data within 2 years and showed specifically the reason and our remediation plan. Much better to do that then have them red-flag you! Our reviewer understood and did not fault us for it. Do not sweep dust under the rug. That's only for the presentation to the scientists, who want to believe data management is just "done", check-the-box, no details.

I put the main materials we used for the MCR LTER mid-term review IM part into a folder in the directory Marty made for us. There was also a 15-minute presentation in Moorea that Andy presented for me, since I was not on the island this time. We did not record it but I could look for the slide deck, if that's wanted. It was written for the non-IM participants, the scientists.

Our IM reviewer was not from LTER but was somewhat familiar with LTER data management, more so than most outsiders. The program officer provided their own one-page guideline for review which looks like a shortened version of the one the IMC wrote, a subset. The IM review was done about 4 weeks before the on-site review so my initial timeline was accelerated. It was done online, for 5 hours, in 2 sessions. Then on-site there was another zoom to cover new questions.

The review went well.

Gastil


On Thu, Jan 16, 2020 at 2:54 PM Marty Downs <downs at nceas.ucsb.edu<mailto:downs at nceas.ucsb.edu>> wrote:
Dear LTER IMs,
We have 3 brand new sites facing their first reviews this year (after only a little over 2 years of funding). Can you share your wisdom to help them prepare?

If you just want to jot down a few notes and share them here on the IM list, that's fine. If you prepared more extensive materials for recent reviews and are willing to share them, we have a shared google drive that is private to LTER information managers. Access it here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0AABt1FqIzosUUk9PVA (while logged in to a gmail-associated account). Go to site-review-sharing-2019.

If you'd rather just email things to me, I can also upload them.
Thanks,
Marty

--
Marty Downs (she/her/hers)
Director, LTER Network Office

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