"How to Use Software Heritage for Archiving and Referencing Your Source Code: Guidelines and Walkthrough"

Roberto Di Cosmo has self-archived "How to Use Software Heritage for Archiving and Referencing Your Source Code: Guidelines and Walkthrough."

Here's an excerpt:

Software source code is an essential research output, and many research communities strongly encourage making the source code of the artefact available by archiving it in publicly-accessible long-term archives. Software Heritage is a non profit, long term universal archive specifically designed for software source code, and able to store not only a software artifact, but also its full development history. It provides the ideal place to preserve research software artifacts, and offers powerful mechanisms to enhance research articles with precise references to relevant fragments of your source code. Using Software Heritage for your research software artifacts is straightforward and involves three simple steps. This document details each of these three steps, providing guidelines for making the most out of Software Heritage for your research.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Computational Intelligence to Aid Text File Format Identification"

Santhilata Kuppili Venkata and Alex Green have self-archived "Computational Intelligence to Aid Text File Format Identification."

Here's an excerpt:

One of the challenges faced in digital preservation is to identify the file types when the files can be opened with simple text editors and their extensions are unknown. The problem gets complicated when the file passes through the test of human readability, but would not make sense how to put to use! The Text File Format Identification (TFFI) project was initiated at The National Archives to identify file types from plain text file contents with the help of computing intelligence models. A methodology that takes help of AI and machine learning to automate the process was successfully tested and implemented on the test data. The prototype developed as a proof of concept has achieved up to 98.58% of accuracy in detecting five file formats.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Research Data Platform: "New Dryad Is Here"

Dryad has released "New Dryad Is Here."

Here's an excerpt:

Dryad’s newest features are centered around making data publishing as easy as possible for researchers:

  • In addition to supporting datasets as part of a journal submission, Dryad now also supports datasets being submitted independently
  • Data can be uploaded from cloud storage or lab servers
  • Datasets can be as large as 300GB
  • Datasets can easily be updated or versioned at any time in our process
  • Standardized data usage and citation statistics are updated and displayed for each published dataset
  • Data can be submitted and downloaded through our new REST APIs

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Teaching Practical Research Data Management Skills through Online Training and Data Management Plan Creation"

Beth Montague-Hellen and Holly Ranger have self-archived "Teaching Practical Research Data Management Skills through Online Training and Data Management Plan Creation."

Here's an excerpt:

Introduction: Research Data Management is growing in importance as a field as the amount of data which researchers must manage increases. It is important to ensure that postgraduate researchers are trained through engaging courses which practically prepare them to fulfil the data management requirements of funders and Universities, and to carry out their research in a transparent and effective manner. Description of program: We present a case study of the development and delivery of a new Research Data Management (RDM) online course for postgraduates and early career researchers. The course implements pedagogical theory and a reverse design paradigm in the development of library training provision enabling the creation of a course vastly more relevant to academic research practice than our previous offering. The course uses a simplified Data Management Plan to introduce students to Research Data Management Concepts, and by asking them to apply this knowledge, lifts the course from one which simply asks students to remember knowledge to one which shows them how to apply this knowledge in a way that is applicable to their own research. The course has been evaluated for effectiveness and student engagement at 3 months. Next steps: Although some analysis of the effectiveness of the new course has been undertaken, the course will continue to be evaluated. Although the course was developed for PGRs it has been popular with ECRs and Professional support staff and we will investigate how we can further meet the needs of these groups. The platform used will allow for the topics most often accessed to be identified and the course, and the University’s training provision will be adjusted based on this evidence. We hope that other institutions will be able to learn from our experience and implement similar courses.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Policy Needs to Go Hand in Hand with Practice: The Learning and Listening Approach to Data Management"

Maria Cruz et al. have published "Policy Needs to Go Hand in Hand with Practice: The Learning and Listening Approach to Data Management" in Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

In this paper, we explain our strategy for developing research data management policies at TU Delft. Policies can be important drivers for research institutions in the implementation of good data management practices. As Rans and Jones note (Rans and Jones 2013), "Policies provide clarity of purpose and may help in the framing of roles, responsibilities and requisite actions. They also legitimise making the case for investment". However, policy development often tends to place the researchers in a passive position, while they are the ones managing research data on a daily basis. Therefore, at TU Delft, we have taken an alternative approach: a policy needs to go hand in hand with practice. The policy development was initiated by the Research Data Services at TU Delft Library, but as the process continued, other stakeholders, such as legal and IT departments, got involved. Finally, the faculty-based Data Stewards have played a key role in leading the consultations with the research community that led to the development of the faculty-specific policies. This allows for disciplinary differences to be reflected in the policies and to create a closer connection between policies and day-to-day research practice. Our primary intention was to keep researchers and research practices at the centre of our strategy for data management. We did not want to introduce and mandate requirements before adequate infrastructure and professional support were available to our research community and before our researchers were themselves willing to discuss formalisation of data management practices.

This paper describes the key steps taken and the most important decisions made during the development of RDM policies at TU Delft.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Identifying Topical Coverages of Curricula using Topic Modeling and Visualization Techniques: A Case of Digital and Data Curation"

Seungwon Yang et al. have published "Identifying Topical Coverages of Curricula using Topic Modeling and Visualization Techniques: A Case of Digital and Data Curation " in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

Digital/data curation curricula have been around for a couple of decades. Currently, several ALA-accredited LIS programs offer digital/data curation courses and certificate programs to address the high demand for professionals with the knowledge and skills to handle digital content and research data in an ever-changing information environment. In this study, we aimed to examine the topical scopes of digital/data curation curricula in the context of the LIS field. We collected 16 syllabi from the digital/data curation courses, as well as textual descriptions of the 11 programs and their core courses offered in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. The collected data were analyzed using a probabilistic topic modeling technique, Latent Dirichlet Allocation, to identify both common and unique topics. The results are the identification of 20 topics both at the program- and course-levels. Comparison between the program- and course-level topics uncovered a set of unique topics, and a number of common topics. Furthermore, we provide interactive visualizations for digital/data curation programs and courses for further analysis of topical distributions. We believe that our combined approach of a topic modeling and visualizations may provide insight for identifying emerging trends and co-occurrences of topics among digital/data curation curricula in the LIS field.

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"Decommissioning a Large Data Archive: Lessons Learned from Cleaning out the Attic"

Richard L. Moore et al. have self-archived "Decommissioning a Large Data Archive: Lessons Learned from Cleaning out the Attic"

Here's an excerpt:

This paper describes key elements of the decommissioning of a large tape-based data archive that the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) operated for its users from the center's inception in 1985 until ~2010. . . . Over the archive's last decade, data volume grew exponentially with a doubling period of ~16 months to a maximum size of ~10 PB. In ~2010, the National Science Foundation terminated funding for SDSC's tape archive and SDSC proceeded with decommissioning the archive over a ~2-year period. This paper briefly describes the principles and process by which we decommissioned this large archive, key issues that arose during this process, and implications for institutions that operate data archival systems and suggestions for operating archival systems in the FAIR data environment.

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"Virtuous and Vicious Circles in the Data Life-Cycle"

Elizabeth Yakel, et al. have published "Virtuous and Vicious Circles in the Data Life-Cycle" in Information Research.

Here's an excerpt:

We present an in-depth case study that follows collaborative data sharing, curation and reuse practices among eleven zooarchaeologists and two curators during a large data reuse project. A data life-cycle model highlights how factors in one life-cycle phase impacted other phases forming virtuous (positive) and vicious (negative) circles.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Developing a Data Management Consultation Service for Faculty Researchers: A Case Study from a Large Midwestern Public University "

Virginia A Dressler et al. have published "Developing a Data Management Consultation Service for Faculty Researchers: A Case Study from a Large Midwestern Public University" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

To inform the development of data management services, a library research team at Kent State University conducted a survey of all tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure track faculty about their data management practices and perceptions. The methodology and results will be presented in the article, as well as how this information was used to inform future work in the library's internal working group. Recommendations will be presented that other academic libraries could model in order to develop similar services at their institutions. Personal anecdotes are included that help ascertain current practices and sentiments around research data from the perspective of the researcher. The article addresses the particular needs of a large Midwestern U.S. academic campus, which are not currently reflected in literature on the topic.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"National Archives Releases Digital Preservation Framework for Public Comment"

The National Archives has released "National Archives Releases Digital Preservation Framework for Public Comment."

Here's an excerpt:

The National Archives and Records Administration is seeking public comment and discussion on our digital preservation framework, which consists of our approach to determining risks faced by electronic files, and our plans for preserving different types of file formats. The public is encouraged to join the discussion, September 16 through November 1, 2019, on GitHub. . . .

This is evidenced by the June 2019 direction (M-19-21, Transition to Electronic Records) to Federal agencies to transition business processes and record keeping to a fully electronic environment and to end the National Archives’ acceptance of paper records by December 31, 2022.

The National Archives' digital preservation subject matter experts, led by Director of Digital Preservation Leslie Johnston, have been hard at work to prepare the National Archives for this change. They have formalized a set of documents that describe how we identify risks to digital files and prioritize them for action, and created specific plans for the preservation of these many file formats.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Progress in Research Data Services: An International Survey of University Libraries"

Andrew M Cox et al. have published "Progress in Research Data Services: An International Survey of University Libraries" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

University libraries have played an important role in constructing an infrastructure of support for Research Data Management at an institutional level. This paper presents a comparative analysis of two international surveys of libraries about their involvement in Research Data Services conducted in 2014 and 2018. The aim was to explore how services had developed over this time period, and to explore the drivers and barriers to change. In particular, there was an interest in how far the FAIR data principles had been adopted.

Services in nearly every area were more developed in 2018 than before, but technical services remained less developed than advisory. Progress on institutional policy was also evident. However, priorities did not seem to have shifted significantly. Open ended answers suggested that funder policy, rather than researcher demand, remained the main driver of service development and that resources and skills gaps remained issues. While widely understood as an important reference point and standard, because of their relatively recent publication date, FAIR principles had not been widely adopted explicitly in policy.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Updating the Data Curation Continuum: Not Just Data, Still Focussed on Curation, More Domain-Oriented"

Andrew Treloar and Jens Klump have published "Updating the Data Curation Continuum: Not Just Data, Still Focussed on Curation, More Domain-Oriented" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

The Data Curation Continuum was developed as a way of thinking about data repository infrastructure. Since its original development over a decade ago, a number of things have changed in the data infrastructure domain. This paper revisits the thinking behind the original data curation continuum and updates it to respond to changes in research objects, storage models, and the repository landscape in general.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Research Data Management and the Evolutions of Scholarship: Policy, Infrastructure and Data Literacy at KU Leuven"

Tom Willaert et al. have published "Research Data Management and the Evolutions of Scholarship: Policy, Infrastructure and Data Literacy at KU Leuven" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

This case study critically examines ongoing developments in contemporary scholarship through the lens of research data management support at KU Leuven, and KU Leuven Libraries in particular. By means of case-based examples, current initiatives for fostering sound scientific work and scholarship are considered in three associated domains: support for policy-making, the development of research infrastructures, and digital literacy training for students, scientists and scholars. It is outlined how KU Leuven Libraries collaborates with partner services in order to contribute to KU Leuven's research data management support network. Particular attention is devoted to the innovations that facilitate such collaborations. These accounts of initial experiences form the basis for a reflection on best practices and pitfalls, and foreground a number of pertinent challenges facing the domain of research data management, including matters of scalability, technology acceptance and adoption, and methods for effectively gauging and communicating the manifold transformations of science and scholarship.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Digital Art through the Looking Glass: New Strategies for Archiving, Collecting and Preserving in Digital Humanities

Edition Donau-Universität has released Digital Art through the Looking Glass: New Strategies for Archiving, Collecting and Preserving in Digital Humanities.

Here's an excerpt:

The aim of this collection is to focus on how we need to redefine preservation methods for digital art by creating a transdisciplinary dialogue between all the involved stakeholders and how we can archive digital artworks by acknowledging their authenticity and mediality. The discussion goes beyond preservation as such and questions how digital artworks can be further re-used for curatorial and dissemination projects, and as research data.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Lost or Found? Discovering Data Needed for Research"

have self-archived "Lost or Found? Discovering Data Needed for Research."

Here's an excerpt:

Finding or discovering data is a necessary precursor to being able to reuse data, although relatively little large-scale empirical evidence exists about how researchers discover, make sense of and (re)use data for research. This study presents evidence from the largest known survey investigating how researchers discover and use data that they do not create themselves. We examine the data needs and discovery strategies of respondents, propose a typology for data (re)use and probe the role of social interactions and other research practices in data discovery, with the aim of informing the design of community-centric solutions and policies.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Practical Application of a Data Stewardship Maturity Matrix for the NOAA OneStop Project"

Ge Peng et al. have published "Practical Application of a Data Stewardship Maturity Matrix for the NOAA OneStop Project" in the Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Assessing the stewardship maturity of individual datasets is an essential part of ensuring and improving the way datasets are documented, preserved, and disseminated to users. It is a critical step towards meeting U.S. federal regulations, organizational requirements, and user needs. However, it is challenging to do so consistently and quantifiably. The Data Stewardship Maturity Matrix (DSMM), developed jointly by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites–North Carolina (CICS-NC), provides a uniform framework for consistently rating stewardship maturity of individual datasets in nine key components: preservability, accessibility, usability, production sustainability, data quality assurance, data quality control/monitoring, data quality assessment, transparency/traceability, and data integrity. So far, the DSMM has been applied to over 800 individual datasets that are archived and/or managed by NCEI, in support of the NOAA's OneStop Data Discovery and Access Framework Project. As a part of the OneStop-ready process, tools, implementation guidance, workflows, and best practices are developed to assist the application of the DSMM and described in this paper. The DSMM ratings are also consistently captured in the ISO standard-based dataset-level quality metadata and citable quality descriptive information documents, which serve as interoperable quality information to both machine and human end-users. These DSMM implementation and integration workflows and best practices could be adopted by other data management and stewardship projects or adapted for applications of other maturity assessment models.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Skills, Standards, and Sapp Nelson’s Matrix: Evaluating Research Data Management Workshop Offerings"

Philip Espinola Coombs et al. have published "Skills, Standards, and Sapp Nelson's Matrix: Evaluating Research Data Management Workshop Offerings" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Objective: To evaluate library workshops on their coverage of data management topics.

Methods: We used a modified version of Sapp Nelson’s Competency Matrix for Data Management Skills, a matrix of learning goals organized by data management competency and complexity level, against which we compared our educational materials: slide decks and worksheets. We examined each of the educational materials against the 333 learning objectives in our modified version of the Matrix to determine which of the learning objectives applied.

Conclusions: We found it necessary to change certain elements of the Matrix’s structure to increase its clarity and functionality: reinterpreting the behaviors, shifting the organization from the three domains of Bloom’s taxonomy to increasing complexity solely within the cognitive domain, as well as creating a comprehensive identifier schema. We appreciated the Matrix for its specificity of learning objectives, its organizational structure, the comprehensive range of competencies included, and its ease of use. On the whole, the Matrix is a useful instrument for the assessment of data management programming.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Building A National Research Data Management Course for Health Information Professionals"

Jessica Van Der Volgen and Shirley Zhao have published "Building A National Research Data Management Course for Health Information Professionals" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Background: In August 2017 the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Training Office (NTO) was awarded an administrative supplement from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to create training for librarians in biomedical and health research data management (RDM). The primary goal of the training was to enable information professionals to initiate or enhance RDM at their institutions.

Case Presentation: An eight-week online course was developed to address key concepts in RDM. Each module was organized around measurable learning objectives using existing subject resources, such as readings, tutorials, and videos. Within each module, an expert in the field co-facilitated relevant discussions, created and graded a practical assignment, and answered questions. Thirty-eight participants were selected for this initial cohort. Mentors were assigned to each participant for guidance in completing a required project action plan to further their RDM goals at their institution. The course was evaluated through pre- and post-tests and an online questionnaire.

Results: Thirty participants successfully completed the online course work and project, and gathered at the National Institutes of Health for a Capstone Summit. Students demonstrated improved knowledge of RDM concepts between the pre- and post-tests. Most students also self-reported increased skill and confidence. Practical assignments with individual feedback from experienced data librarians were the most valued aspect of the course. Time to complete each module was underestimated.

Conclusions: The initial offering of this training program improved the RDM skills and knowledge of participants and enabled students to add or enhance services at their institutions. Further investigations are necessary to determine the longer-term impact on the individuals and their libraries. While many of the participants will need additional training to become part of the data-ready workforce of health information professionals, completing this training is an important step in their professional development.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap