By Bhavya Sharma
Virginia Ortíz-Repiso Jiménez, associate professor at the University Carlos III de Madrid (Madrid, Spain), recently arrived at the College of Computing & Informatics’ Metadata Research Center (MRC) as a visiting scholar for Winter Term 2016.
In working with MRC Director and A. B. Kroeger Professor Jane Greenberg, PhD, Jiménez’s research at the MRC will focus on bridging the gap between supply and demand in new skills and competencies required in digital science and data-intensive research for collecting, handling, analyzing, storing, processing and disseminating large amounts of data.
As a researcher and professor, Jiménez’s main research interests are in areas related to managing technology in digital libraries and searching and retrieving information in electronic environments. She is also interested in research data management and sustainable funding in the field. Citing an article by Ricky Erway and Amanda Rinehart titled “If You Build It, Will They Fund? Making Research Data Management Sustainable,” Jiménez discussed how one of the biggest problems in achieving research data repositories is the lack of sustainable funding to provide data management support.
“Notwithstanding the many re-skilling and training initiatives, there are shortages, gaps and mismatches between the supply and demand of skills due to a general lack of awareness, definitions and common language to support the education, training, recruitment and assessment of data professionals in successfully teaming up with researchers in different scientific fields,” she said.
Jiminez’s research has three broad goals — first, to identify and map a variety of skills and competences in support of e-research, thereby exposing shortages, gaps and mismatches between demand and supply; second, to create a reference model for data professionals with skills and competencies and their inter-dependencies within career pathways and links to curricula and training requirements; and third, to contribute to the development of community awareness among data professionals through web-based engagement tools and programs.
“By developing specific web tools for data [professionals], such as an ontology of data skills, a visualization of the reference model, and an interactive community map, the objective [is not] to establish a new community platform or web presence for data professionals; the aim is to contribute to and thereby strengthen existing initiatives in the field, such as the Research Data Alliance (RDA), which is already supporting data and computing e-infrastructure communities,” she said.
Jiménez has been a professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid since 1996. She teaches mainly on issues related to the management of technology in information units and information retrieval in electronic environments. Some of her work has been published in conference proceedings, collective works and in various national and international journals in the field (Spanish Journal of Scientific Documentation, The Electronic Library, Information Technology and Libraries, etc.).
She previously served as director of the Department of Library and Information Science at the Carlos III University of Madrid. Jiménez serves as chair-elect at the European Chapter of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) and also holds appointment as a member of the Institute of Culture and Technology.
Additionally, she, along with her research group TECNODOC at Carlos III University, is currently working on a project called “Custody and Digital Management for the Reuse of Open Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences Data,” which is funded by the Government of Spain.