Consulting

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Consultation Services

CDVS provides assistance through free consultations. You can ask a question or schedule an in-person or virtual meeting by emailing us at askdata@duke.edu. We also offer regular walk-in consulting hours in the Brandaleone Lab for Data and Visualization Services.

We can provide expertise and guidance on data sources, analysis, visualization, management, and digital mapping. If the needs of your project go beyond what we can provide in a few consultation sessions, we may still be able to provide our expertise within the structure of a Research Partnership. Consultations are focused on helping you get past roadblocks, such as troubleshooting software issues, locating data sources for analysis, connecting you to resources, discussing emerging trends in open scholarship and research, brainstorming visual representations of your data and/or processes, or curating data for public access.

What to Expect

• We can provide expertise and guidance on data sources, analysis, visualization, management, and digital mapping. If you have a request that we are not able to support, we may refer you to a more appropriate service.
• Our general service model is to empower you to do things yourself rather than doing things for you.
• Consults are free for everyone, though priority is given to members of the Duke University community, including faculty, staff, and students. 
• Consults usually last between 30-90 minutes, depending on the needs of the project and time availability of our consultants.
• Our consulting model is designed to provide a single consult or a short series of consultations. 
• Patrons can expect to hear back from a consultant within one to two working days of the request being made to schedule a consultation. 
• Consultants may request sample data or other project files, code, or other information about your needs. These requests allow for our consultants to prepare in order to make consultations as productive and efficient as possible.
• If the needs of your project go beyond what we can provide in a few consultation sessions, we may still be able to provide our expertise within the structure of a Research Partnership. 
• Consults are not intended for use by students as step-by-step homework help or a tutoring support service. That said, we are happy to help students apply concepts and techniques to their work independently.
• CDVS does not provide protracted, for-hire, or contract-based consultation services. We are not a “core” facility that provides fee-for-service work.

Our Expectations

• After the first consultation we expect that you will make an effort to work towards your objectives between appointments. 
• Some data may contain sensitive or classified information. If you are unsure whether any data sharing restrictions apply to your dataset, please check with the PI or data steward, or check the IRB before sharing it. You may not share classified or sensitive data with consultants at any time. 

Drop-In Consultations

In addition to scheduled appointments, CDVS offers drop-in office hours throughout the week during the academic year. Drop-in hours are staffed on a rotating basis by our consultants and Economics graduate interns. You can find the drop-in hours and schedule on our website. Interns are only available for consultations during Fall and Spring semester drop-in hours. 

We cannot guarantee that you will be able to meet with a particular specialist or that a consultant will be available to address your questions during drop-in hours. In the event your request cannot be completed during a drop-in consultation, the consultant may schedule a followup appointment, refer you to a different consultant, or suggest you email askdata@duke.edu.

Repeat Consultations

Project needs may sometimes exceed our capacity to provide support and expertise. While most consultations consist of either a single consultation or a series of a few consultations, our ability to accommodate repeat consultations fluctuates with the overall demand for our services across the University. If the number of requests by a patron exceeds six one-hour consultation sessions in a semester, we may need to discuss the possibility of collaborating within the framework of a Research Partnership (see below) or direct the patron toward alternative resources.

Disclaimer

CDVS consultants aim to provide the most accurate and thorough advice possible; however, we make no promises or warranties as to the applicability of our advice to particular research situations. We rely on the person seeking the consultation to make this judgment. CDVS consultations do not constitute legal advice and are provided for general informational purposes only.

Beyond Consultations

Grants and Letters of Support

Work that falls within our standard consultation and education services (see above) does not require a formal “Letter of Support” for your grant. Grants that only seek to reference the CDVS consultation service and facilities as part of the Facilities and Other Resources section (NIH), Facilities, Resources and Other Equipment section (NSF), or similar section for other sponsored research proposals can reference the following text taken from the Facilities and Resources Repository on myResearchPath: 

“The Center for Data and Visualization Sciences is located within Duke University Libraries and serves Duke University and Duke University Health System. Our team of consultants and interns offers support in data science, data sources, data management and curation, data visualization, and mapping and GIS (geographic information systems).” 

For grants proposing work that requires in-depth assistance that falls outside of our standard consulting service (for example: performing visualization design work, writing complex code, developing a customized data curation workflow), we may still be able to collaborate within the framework of a research partnership. Proposals that include a partnership with CDVS must be shared with us at least two weeks in advance of Duke’s internal grant deadlines. CDVS staff will review your proposal and endeavor to provide a prompt response based on staff capacity, availability, and cost. Please note that this deadline also applies to letters of support from grant proposals.If in doubt, please contact askdata@duke.edu.

Research Partnerships

CDVS consultants are researchers too! If your needs go beyond the scope of our typical consultation model, consultants are occasionally available to partner with Duke researchers on projects. 

The ability of CDVS to partner on longer-term projects is based on staff availability, project scope and funding. To determine whether your project might be a good fit for a CDVS Research Partnership, please reach out to us at askdata@duke.edu.

Please see the Grants and Letters of Support section above for guidance on including CDVS as a research partner on funding applications.