The fourth meeting of the Research Data Management Forum with the theme of Dealing with Sensitive Data: Managing Ethics, Security and Trust will take place over 10 – 11 March 2010 at Chancellors Hotel and Conference Centre, University of Manchester. The Forum is designed for researchers, digital repository managers, staff from library, information and research organisations, data curators, data centre managers, data scientists, research funding organisations and research networks. Further information is available from the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

The author also turned to other organisations for their views, pointing to the study conducted by JISC and the Research Information Network (RIN) entitled Communicating knowledge: how and why researchers publish and disseminate their findings which stated that take-up by academics was lower than anticipated. Neil Jacobs of JISC indicated there were interesting examples of usage by researchers of such technologies but that, “what is appropriate in one field of research may not be appropriate in another”. Liz Lyon of UKOLN advised that a further obstacle to adoption lay in the area of trust: “Academics can be concerned that they will be ’scooped’ and so there is a reluctance to share. You may find people will share information with known contacts, but are wary about opening themselves up on the Internet.” Branwen Hide, RIN, remarked that “academics like things to be quick and simple and if a product isn’t, they won’t use it”.

Cameron Neylon summarised the benefits of Mendeley and Zotero by adding, “.. Essentially, you’re doing the same things you would have done previously but much more quickly and with access to many more people and items.”