Digital Research Toolkit

High Performance Computing: Eddie

Eddie is the University's Research Compute Cluster and can analyse large amounts of data faster than a desktop computer. You can work with very large datasets of any type for simulation and modelling, as well as for data analysis, manipulation, mining and visualisation.

Research Cloud: Eleanor 

Eleanor is the University's Cloud Service for Research and allows you to create virtual machines configured to your exact requirements. You have full control of the installed software and configuration and access to a range of pre-configured operating systems.

Computational notebooks allow you to easily create, edit and run code written in a variety of languages, and access a multitude of additional coding libraries and packages. If you are a researcher that is relatively new to programming, Noteable is ideally suited to help you look at data and analyse it using code, easily accessing and using the pre-loaded libraries of data as well as pre-installed code blocks.

This service can help researchers to:

• Undertake common machine learning methods
• Undertake linear regression and qualitative outcomes
• Analyse data, plot and review results, and then compare different approaches
• Develop ‘training models’ that use data to predict outcomes.

To access the service and user support materials, including videos on how to start and use the service, demonstration case studies and other information and help, go to https://noteable.edina.ac.uk/.

The Digimap service provides researchers with access to Ordnance Survey, geology, historical, land cover, aerial and marine maps data for Great Britain. OpenStreetMap data is also provided, covering the globe, augmented by Collins Bartholomew World Panorama (atlas-style) mapping.

Digimap is designed for both the novice and experienced researcher and offers two main functions in each Collection:

• ready-made mapping, customisable and printable to suit your purpose 
• data download, allowing you to take the raw data into your own system for processing, analysis and integration with other datasets.

To access the service and support materials, including training videos and webinars, step by step guides to using the services and data go to https://digimap.edina.ac.uk/. Online registration is required for each user, a process taking a few minutes to complete. Log in with your UUN to complete this.

Research Data Service

The Research Data Service offers tools and support for Research Data Management (RDM) across the full research life cycle: from before your research is funded, to the winding up and reporting/publishing phases.

Our services include help with developing RDM plans, data storage and collaboration and help with preserving data for future purposes. We host two data archives: Edinburgh DataShare, our open access data repository, and DataVault for golden-copies of closed-access data.

We host a discovery portal to help researchers locate pre-existing datasets to be used for new studies.

Finally, there is an extensive range of training to support all members of the research community.

Library Materials

The Library enables access to millions of primary source materials covering a wide variety of subject disciplines, including:

• 1.4 million e-books
• 185,000 e-journals
• 700 licensed databases
• 84,000 streaming videos
• 160,000 Open Access resources available through the Library’s online discovery system, DiscoverEd
• 44,000 digitised books, images and resources from Library and University collections

For many of our datasets, the licenses permit data and text mining.

Digitisation

The Library offers a range of Digitisation Services for research, teaching and learning, from E-Reserve and accessibility scanning of general collection materials to specialized photography and scanning of rare and unique research collections acquired or created by the University of Edinburgh. It also provides access to commercial grade and high-end professional scanning equipment for 2D & 3D scanning; digital manufacture; & novel data visualisation methods including virtual reality, augmented reality and holographics.

Disseminating your Research

We offer a full range of support to help you share your research and achieve maximum impact. This includes a comprehensive copyright advisory service, bibliometrics support, advice on publications and Open Access (including review of publisher contracts), use of author IDs such as ORCID and support to use a range of tools such as SciVal and Altmetric. One-to-one video consultations are bookable.