Category: Data Curation, Open Data, and Research Data Management

"Data Management Practices Across an Institution: Survey and Report"

Cunera Buys and Pamela Shaw have published "Data Management Practices Across an Institution: Survey and Report" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

A 21-question survey was distributed to approximately 12,940 faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral candidates, and selected research-affiliated staff at Northwestern's Evanston and Chicago Campuses. Survey questions solicited information regarding types and size of data, current and future needs for data storage, data retention and data sharing, what researchers are doing (or not doing) regarding data management planning, and types of training or assistance needed. There were 831 responses and 788 respondents completed the survey, for a response rate of approximately 6.4%.

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"Do You Have an Institutional Data Policy? A Review of the Current Landscape of Library Data Services and Institutional Data Policies"

Kristin Briney et al. have published "Do You Have an Institutional Data Policy? A Review of the Current Landscape of Library Data Services and Institutional Data Policies" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication,.

Here's an excerpt:

This study reviewed library data services efforts and institutional data policies of 206 American universities, drawn from the July 2014 Carnegie list of universities with "Very High" or "High" research activity designation. Twenty-four different characteristics relating to university type, library data services, policy type, and policy contents were examined.

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A Selection of Research Data Management Tools Throughout the Data Lifecycle

Jan Krause has self-archived "A Selection of Research Data Management Tools Throughout the Data Lifecycle."

Here's an excerpt:

In this document, several useful research data management tools are listed and described for each step of their research throughout the data lifecyle management.

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"Changes in Data Sharing and Data Reuse Practices and Perceptions among Scientists Worldwide"

Carol Tenopir et al. have published "Changes in Data Sharing and Data Reuse Practices and Perceptions among Scientists Worldwide" in PLOS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

In this study, the DataONE Usability and Assessment working group addresses two primary goals: To examine the current state of data sharing and reuse perceptions and practices among research scientists as they compare to the 2009/2010 baseline study, and to examine differences in practices and perceptions across age groups, geographic regions, and subject disciplines. We distributed surveys to a multinational sample of scientific researchers at two different time periods (October 2009 to July 2010 and October 2013 to March 2014) to observe current states of data sharing and to see what, if any, changes have occurred in the past 3-4 years. We also looked at differences across age, geographic, and discipline-based groups as they currently exist in the 2013/2014 survey. Results point to increased acceptance of and willingness to engage in data sharing, as well as an increase in actual data sharing behaviors. However, there is also increased perceived risk associated with data sharing, and specific barriers to data sharing persist.

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"Getting Emotional about Data: The Soft Side of Data Management Services"

Amanda K. Rinehart has published "Getting Emotional about Data: The Soft Side of Data Management Services" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

While I have yet to discover why researchers do not readily acknowledge that research, and the data that underpins that research, has emotional connotations, I have found that using active listening skills minimizes negativity during consultations.

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"Sharing Research Data and Intellectual Property Law: A Primer"

Michael W. Carroll has published "Sharing Research Data and Intellectual Property Law: A Primer" in PLOS Biology.

Here's an excerpt:

Sharing research data by depositing it in connection with a published article or otherwise making data publicly available sometimes raises intellectual property questions in the minds of depositing researchers, their employers, their funders, and other researchers who seek to reuse research data. In this context or in the drafting of data management plans, common questions are (1) what are the legal rights in data; (2) who has these rights; and (3) how does one with these rights use them to share data in a way that permits or encourages productive downstream uses? Leaving to the side privacy and national security laws that regulate sharing certain types of data, this Perspective explains how to work through the general intellectual property and contractual issues for all research data.

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Research Data Management: A Primer Publication of the National Information Standards Organization

NISO has released Research Data Management: A Primer Publication of the National Information Standards Organization.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The primer on Research Data Management provides an overview of how data management has changed in recent years, and outlines best practices for the collection, documentation, and preservation of research data. The importance of creating a data management plan (DMP) before beginning a research data project is emphasized. Crucial questions regarding how the data will be managed are answered ahead of time in a DMP, thus making it easier for the researcher to collect and document the data properly for future use and reuse. Creating research data that is easily reproducible and transparent is the ultimate goal, and following the guidelines in this primer can help educate researchers to ensure their data is available for others. The differences between publishing papers and publishing datasets and the citation challenges the data community are working on solving are also discussed.

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"Dataverse 4.0: Defining Data Publishing"

Mercè Crosas has self-archived "Dataverse 4.0: Defining Data Publishing."

Here's an excerpt:

The research community needs reliable, standard ways to make the data produced by scientific research available to the community, while getting credit as data authors. As a result, a new form of scholarly publication is emerging: data publishing. Data pubishing—or making data long-term accessible, reusable and citable—is more involved than simply providing a link to a data file or posting the data to the researchers web site. In this paper, we define what is needed for proper data publishing and describe how the open-source Dataverse software helps define, enable and enhance data publishing for all.

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"Open Journal Systems and Dataverse Integration—Helping Journals to Upgrade Data Publication for Reusable Research"

Micah Altman et al. have self-archived "Open Journal Systems and Dataverse Integration—Helping Journals to Upgrade Data Publication for Reusable Research."

Here's an excerpt:

This article describes the novel open source tools for open data publication in open access journal workflows. This comprises a plugin for Open Journal Systems that supports a data submission, citation, review, and publication workflow; and an extension to the Dataverse system that provides a standard deposit API. We describe the function and design of these tools, provide examples of their use, and summarize their initial reception. We conclude by discussing future plans and potential impact.

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"Data Management Outreach to Junior Faculty Members: A Case Study"

Megan Sapp Nelson has published "Data Management Outreach to Junior Faculty Members: A Case Study " in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

New tenure track faculty members are generally in positions as leaders of a research laboratory or group for the first time. In addition to building up the infrastructure of a research lab (whether space, equipment, funding, or personnel), the new faculty member is also setting the research process and expectations for the first time as well. This article highlights outreach to new faculty members assisting those individuals with developing a data management protocol that effectively supports the laboratory researchers to make quality data available internally to and externally from a research laboratory. Using a self-assessment tool and reflective conversation, junior faculty were offered insight and advice into creating a data management protocol for use in their research laboratory.

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"University Data Policies and Library Data Services: Who Owns Your Data?"

Lisa D. Zilinski, Abigail Goben and Kristin Briney have published "University Data Policies and Library Data Services: Who Owns Your Data?" in the Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Here's an excerpt:

A review of research data and library data services presented on the websites of 206 top research universities as of July 2014 provided insights into policies and practices. Limited to publicly accessible information, the review indicated about half of the surveyed libraries offer some type of data services beyond a resource guide, about four in 10 had a librarian fully or partly dedicated to data management support and about one in 10 had a dedicated data repository. Institutions are likely to have a specific data policy if they are more involved in research and have higher research spending, have larger faculties and offer data services or a data librarian.

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"Research Data Management Practices: A Snapshot in Time"

Mary Anne Kennan and Lina Markauskaite have published "Research Data Management Practices: A Snapshot in Time" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

There is increasing pressure from funders, publishers, the public, universities and other research organisations for researchers to improve their data management and sharing practices. However, little is known about researchers' data management and sharing practices and concerns. The research reported in this paper seeks to address this by providing insight into the research data management and sharing practices of academics at ten universities in New South Wales, Australia. Empirical data was taken from a survey to which 760 academics responded, with 634 completing at least one section. Results showed that at the time of the survey there were a wide variety of research data in use, including analogue data, and that the challenges researchers faced in managing their data included finding safe and secure storage, particularly after project completion, but also during projects when data are used (and thus stored) on a wide variety of less-than-optimal temporary devices. Data sharing was not widely practiced and only a relatively small proportion of researchers had a research data management plan.

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"SHARE Community Stakeholders Convene Working Meeting in Washington, DC"

SHARE has released "SHARE Community Stakeholders Convene Working Meeting in Washington, DC."

Here's an excerpt:

Accomplishments since the first SHARE Community Meeting in October 2014 include the DuraSpace webinar series, launch of the share-research.org website and the SHARE Notify beta, and surpassing the milestone of one million research release events included in SHARE Notify. Currently in the works are partnerships with IRIS [http://iris.isr.umich.edu/] and ORCID and a pending grant proposal to fund Phase II of SHARE.

See also: "SHARE Community Meeting, Summer 2015."

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"Bigger on the Inside: Building Research Data Services at the University of Virginia"

Michele Claibourn has published "Bigger on the Inside: Building Research Data Services at the University of Virginia" in Insights: the UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Every story has a beginning, where the narrator chooses to start, though this is rarely the genesis. This story begins with the launch of the University of Virginia Library's new Research Data Services unit in October 2013. Born from the conjoining of a data management team and a data analysis team, Research Data Services expanded to encompass data discovery and acquisitions, research software support, and new expertise in the use of restricted data. Our purpose is to respond to the challenges created by the growing ubiquity and scale of data by helping researchers acquire, analyze, manage, and archive these resources. We have made serious strides toward becoming 'the face of data services at U.Va.' This article tells a bit of our story so far, relays some early challenges and how we've responded to them, outlines several initial successes, and summarizes a few lessons going forward.

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"Assessment of Data Management Services at New England Region Resource Libraries"

Julie Goldman et al. have published "Assessment of Data Management Services at New England Region Resource Libraries" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

The focus of data management literature has been on programs at individual institutions and on higher-education initiatives as a whole (Reznik-Zellen et al. 2012). In contrast, this assessment distinctively surveys New England Region (NER) medical and biomedical libraries and their development of educational programs and appropriate services for research data management. Unique to this study, this group of special libraries shared their institution's status on offering data services, how their librarians are becoming educated on data management, and if their users are in need of these types of services.

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"Data Stewardship in the Earth Sciences"

Robert R. Downs et al. have published "Data Stewardship in the Earth Sciences" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

In the Earth Sciences, for the past 15+ years, the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) has been working to make Earth science data more discoverable, accessible, and usable by more people. As a part of this effort, the ESIP Data Stewardship Committee has worked on a variety of recommendations, best practices, and guidelines that have significantly moved data stewardship in the Earth sciences forward, with impacts ranging from influencing how data management is done within government agencies and by other data stewards, to providing guidelines for citation of Earth science data used by publishers in the Earth sciences. Completed and ongoing activities of the committee are described. Interested readers are invited to join our community.

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RDM Workflows and Integrations for HEIs Using Hosted Services

Arkivum has released RDM Workflows and Integrations for HEIs Using Hosted Services.

Here's an excerpt:

This report aims to look at what workflows are typically in place, where the gaps are, and how hosted RDM services could help fill these gaps or simplify the processes. In particular, this report aims to:

  • Describe the workflows/processes involved when researchers and institutions use or operate RDM infrastructure (tools, services, platforms).
  • Provide practical examples of how RDM workflows are implemented and supported at a range of UK Higher Education Institutions, including integration of systems/tools.
  • Define/compare the strengths/weaknesses when using hosted RDM infrastructure, onsite infrastructure or a combination.

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"Articulating a Vision for Community-Engaged Data Curation in the Digital Humanities"

Lydia Zvyagintseva has self-archived "Articulating a Vision for Community-Engaged Data Curation in the Digital Humanities."

Here's an excerpt:

The purpose of this study was to identify critical elements in a conceptual model for a community-engaged data curation in the digital humanities, to propose a set of evaluation criteria that would act as guiding principles in pursuing such work in the future, and to explore ways in which community-engaged data curation practice can further the mission of public digital humanities.

| New: Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5 | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"PLOS Recommended Data Repositories"

Daniella Lowenberg has published "PLOS Recommended Data Repositories" in EveryOne.

Here's an excerpt:

In line with our updated Data Policy, we are pleased to announce a PLOS Data Repository Recommendation Guide.

To support the selection of data repositories for authors, PLOS has identified a set of established repositories, which are recognized and trusted within their respective communities. To develop the list, we consulted with editors, organizations running data repositories, and other publishers in order to cover the breadth of disciplines and subject areas published by PLOS.

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"Meeting the Needs of Data Management Training: The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Data Management for Scientists Short Course"

Chung-Yi Hou has published "Meeting the Needs of Data Management Training: The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Data Management for Scientists Short Course" in Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

In order to assist scientists and their library and information partners to gain familiarity, skills, and knowledge of data management, the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) has developed the Data Management for Scientists Short Course. The Short Course provides training on a range of data management topics, including metadata, file formats, and interoperable content. This paper provides an overview of the background and motivation for data management, followed by an introduction to the Short Course. The discussion on the Short Course' features demonstrates the advantages of learning the fundamentals of data management through the Short Course. The paper concludes by emphasizing the importance of familiarity with data management practices for both researchers and their library and information partners.

| New: Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5 | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Examination of Federal Data Management Plan Guidelines"

Jennifer L. Thoegersen has published "Examination of Federal Data Management Plan Guidelines" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship .

Here's an excerpt:

This paper examines federal funding agencies' data management plan guidelines in relation to the broad elements of data management identified by the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data: Description, Impact, Content & Format, Protection, Preservation, Access, and Transfer of Responsibility. Specifically, statements in agencies' guidelines were categorized into the most applicable category (or categories). The representation of each category within each agency's guidelines was addressed, and the statements falling in each category were analyzed. Some categories, including Access and Preservation, were represented in all or nearly all of the guidelines examined. Other categories-Impact and Transfer of Responsibility-were rarely addressed.

| New: Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5 | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5

Digital Scholarship has released Version 5 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography. This selective bibliography includes over 350 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions.

The "digital curation" concept is still evolving. In "Digital Curation and Trusted Repositories: Steps toward Success," Christopher A. Lee and Helen R. Tibbo define digital curation as follows:

Digital curation involves selection and appraisal by creators and archivists; evolving provision of intellectual access; redundant storage; data transformations; and, for some materials, a commitment to long-term preservation. Digital curation is stewardship that provides for the reproducibility and re-use of authentic digital data and other digital assets. Development of trustworthy and durable digital repositories; principles of sound metadata creation and capture; use of open standards for file formats and data encoding; and the promotion of information management literacy are all essential to the longevity of digital resources and the success of curation efforts.

Most sources have been published from January 2009 through December 2014; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. If such versions are unavailable, links to the publishers' descriptions are provided.

Abstracts are included in this bibliography if a work is under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY and national/international variations), a Creative Commons public domain dedication (CC0), or a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark and this is clearly indicated in the work (see the "Note on the Inclusion of Abstracts" for more details).

It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

"A System for Distributed Minting and Management of Persistent Identifiers"

Lukasz Bolikowski, et al. have published "A System for Distributed Minting and Management of Persistent Identifiers" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

Minting persistent identifiers and managing their metadata is typically governed by a single organization. Such a single point of failure poses a risk to longevity and long-term preservation of identifiers. In this paper we address the risk by proposing a radically different approach, in which minting and management of persistent identifiers is distributed, and the integrity of the distributed system is guaranteed by public-key cryptography. We describe the general architecture of the system, analyse its robustness and discuss potential deployment scenarios

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"Data Literacy Instruction in Academic Libraries: Best Practices for Librarians"

Amanda Wanner has published "Data Literacy Instruction in Academic Libraries: Best Practices for Librarians" in See Also:.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of bringing data literacy instruction to academic libraries. Information literacy and digital literacy in libraries has been widely discussed in the library sciences and education literature, but until recently very little focus has been given to data literacy. However, new e-government and open data initiatives over the past decade have created widely available public data that is of great interest to students and academics. Increased technological capabilities to process "big data" have also created new opportunities for the layperson and researcher alike. One popular article claims, "Ensuring that big data creates big value calls for a reskilling effort that is at least as much about fostering a data-driven mindset and analytical culture as it is about adopting new technology" (Harris, 2012). The influx of available data presents unique challenges for librarians. How can libraries play a role, for example, in this "reskilling effort" to develop a "data-driven mindset"?

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Institutional ORCID Implementation and Cost-Benefit Analysis Report

JISC has released the Institutional ORCID Implementation and Cost-Benefit Analysis Report .

Here's an excerpt:

In May 2014, Jisc and ARMA commissioned eight HEI ORCID Pilot projects to support the broader use of ORCID unique researcher identifiers (ORCID iDs) in UK higher education. Information Power Ltd and Research Consulting Ltd were commissioned to prepare this report on the results of the eight pilot projects in order to:

  • Inform how ORCID is implemented in UK HEIs;
  • Enable institutional managers to build a business case for ORCID adoption in HEIs; and
  • Encourage wider adoption of ORCID IDs

The report is based on semi-structured interviews with the Jisc-ARMA ORCID pilot projects and other research community stakeholders conducted either face-to-face or through telephone/Skype interviews, attendance at the September 2014 and January 2015 pilot project workshops and desk-based review of other relevant evidence.

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