Category: Digital Curation & Digital Preservation

"Tiny Data: Building a Community of Practice around Humanities Datasets"

Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati et al. have published "Tiny Data: Building a Community of Practice around Humanities Datasets" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

Quantitative data, the foundation of scientific research, have been in the foreground of discussions about data creation, curation, and publication pipelines. However, data for humanistic and social scientific inquiries take many forms, including physical and ephemeral primary resources (books, objects, performances, interactions); qualitative, free-form observations; as well as quantitative, structured data and metadata. At the Vanderbilt University Jean and Alexander Heard Library, we started the Tiny Data Working Group (TDWG) in 2016 to tackle some of the humanistic research data creation and curation issues in a constructive, collaborative, and interdisciplinary format. The present paper considers what it means to be FAIR with humanities data, as well as how to build a community of data-literate humanists, based on our experiences with the TDWG.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Remediation Data Management Plans: A Tool for Recovering Research Data from Messy, Messy Projects"

Clara Llebot has published "Remediation Data Management Plans: A Tool for Recovering Research Data from Messy, Messy Projects" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

Data Management Plans (DMPs) have been used in the last decade to encourage good data management practices among researchers. DMPs are widely used, preventive tools that encourage good data management practices. DMPs are traditionally used to manage data during the planning stage of the project, often required for grant proposals, and prior to data collection. In this paper we will use a case study to argue that Data Management Plans can be useful in improving the management of the data of research projects that have moved beyond the planning stage of the research life cycle. In particular, we focus on the case of active projects where data has already been collected and is still being analyzed. We discuss the differences and commonalities in structure between preventive Data Management Plans and remedial Data Management Plans, and describe in detail the additional considerations that are needed when writing remedial Data Management Plans: the goals and audience of the document, the data inventory, and an implementation plan.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"DiiS: A Biomedical Data Access Framework for Aiding Data Driven Research Supporting FAIR Principles"

Priya Deshpande et al. have published "DiiS: A Biomedical Data Access Framework for Aiding Data Driven Research Supporting FAIR Principles " in Data (CC BY 4.0).

Here's an excerpt:

In this paper, we introduce and describe an abstract framework that models these ideal [FAIR] goals, and could be a step toward supporting data driven research. We also develop a system instantiated on our framework called the Data integration and indexing System (DiiS). The system provides an integration model for making healthcare data available on a global scale. Our research work describes the challenges inhibiting data producers, data stewards, and data brokers in achieving FAIR goals for sharing biomedical data. We attempt to address some of the key challenges through the proposed system. We evaluated our framework using the software architecture testing technique and also looked at how different challenges in data integration are addressed by our system. Our evaluation shows that the DiiS framework is a user friendly data integration system that would greatly contribute to biomedical research.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Building Companionship Between Community and Personal Archiving: Strengthening Personal Digital Archiving Support in Community-Based Mobile Digitization Projects"

Ruohua Han has published "Building Companionship Between Community and Personal Archiving: Strengthening Personal Digital Archiving Support in Community-Based Mobile Digitization Projects" in Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper examines the flexibility and sustainability of two community-based mobile digitization projects (Culture in Transit and Georgia HomePLACE DigiKits) in supporting PDA. The assessment shows that the projects are in a good position to support PDA, with only some concerns about ensuring sustainable access to digitization equipment and sufficient guidance in long-term preservation.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"NYU Receives Major Grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Collaborative Effort Aims to Meet the Challenge of Preserving New Forms of Digital Scholarship"

New York University has released "NYU Receives Major Grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Collaborative Effort Aims to Meet the Challenge of Preserving New Forms of Digital Scholarship."

Here's an excerpt:

New York University has received a grant of $527,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a project to help ensure the preservation of complex new forms of digital scholarship. In the collaborative project, "Enhancing Services to Preserve New Forms of Scholarship," participating preservation service organizations will test the limits of their capabilities today, using their existing tools or drawing on partnerships to preserve a series of increasingly complex works from participating scholarly publishers. The ultimate goal is a clearly defined range of currently preservable technologies, as well as a set of guidelines and best practices for the publishing field.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Cold Storage Data Archives: More Than Just a Bunch of Tapes"

Bunjamin Memishi et al. have self-archived "Cold Storage Data Archives: More Than Just a Bunch of Tapes."

Here's an excerpt:

The abundance of available sensor and derived data from large scientific experiments, such as earth observation programs, radio astronomy sky surveys, and high-energy physics already exceeds the storage hardware globally fabricated per year. . . . While high-performance data analytics has received much attention from the research community, the growing number of problems in designing and deploying cold storage archives has only received very little attention.

In this paper, we take the first step towards bridging this gap in knowledge by presenting an analysis of four real-world cold storage archives from three different application domains. In doing so, we highlight (i) workload characteristics that differentiate these archives from traditional, performance-sensitive data analytics, (ii) design trade-offs involved in building cold storage systems for these archives, and (iii) deployment trade-offs with respect to migration to the public cloud.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Data Stewardship Week in an Academic Library: An Overview"

Caitlin Harrington et al. have published "Data Stewardship Week in an Academic Library: An Overview" in College & Research Libraries News..

Here's an excerpt:

In the information age, data stewardship is crucial for individual and organizational productivity. It is easy to get overwhelmed by vast amounts of information being created every second. Information overload has become a common occurrence in the workplace to the extent that people "spend more time searching for the right information, leaving them less time for proper analyses using the acquired information." Thus, the excess of information in the workplace can lead to stress, lack of productivity, and information fatigue.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Teaching Research Data Management for Students"

Cord Wiljes and Philipp Cimiano have self-archived "Teaching Research Data Management for Students."

Here's an excerpt:

Sound skills in managing research data are a fundamental requirement in any discipline of research. Therefore, research data management should be included in academic education of students as early as possible. We have been teaching an interdisciplinary full semester's course on research data management for six years. We report how we established the course. We describe our competency-based approach to teaching research data management and the curriculum of topics that we consider essential. We evaluate our approach by a survey done among the participants of the course and summarize the lessons we learned in teaching the course.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Ten Principles for Machine-Actionable Data Management Plans"

Tomasz Miksa et al. have published "Ten Principles for Machine-Actionable Data Management Plans" in PLOS Computational Biology.

Here's an excerpt:

Data management plans (DMPs) are documents accompanying research proposals and project outputs. DMPs are created as free-form text and describe the data and tools employed in scientific investigations. They are often seen as an administrative exercise and not as an integral part of research practice.

There is now widespread recognition that the DMP can have more thematic, machine-actionable richness with added value for all stakeholders: researchers, funders, repository managers, research administrators, data librarians, and others. The research community is moving toward a shared goal of making DMPs machine-actionable to improve the experience for all involved by exchanging information across research tools and systems and embedding DMPs in existing workflows. This will enable parts of the DMP to be automatically generated and shared, thus reducing administrative burdens and improving the quality of information within a DMP.

This paper presents 10 principles to put machine-actionable DMPs (maDMPs) into practice and realize their benefits. The principles contain specific actions that various stakeholders are already undertaking or should undertake in order to work together across research communities to achieve the larger aims of the principles themselves. We describe existing initiatives to highlight how much progress has already been made toward achieving the goals of maDMPs as well as a call to action for those who wish to get involved.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Implementing Publisher Policies That Inform, Support and Encourage Authors to Share Data: Two Case Studies"

Leila Jones, Rebecca Grant, and Iain Hrynaszkiewicz have published "Implementing Publisher Policies That Inform, Support and Encourage Authors to Share Data: Two Case Studies" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

Open research data is one of the key areas in the expanding open scholarship movement. Scholarly journals and publishers find themselves at the heart of the shift towards openness, with recent years seeing an increase in the number of scholarly journals with data-sharing policies aiming to increase transparency and reproducibility of research. In this article we present two case studies which examine the experiences that two leading academic publishers, Taylor & Francis and Springer Nature, have had in rolling out data-sharing policies. We illustrate some of the considerations involved in providing consistent policies across journals of many disciplines, reflecting on successes and challenges.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Report on the Survey of Digital Data Management Practices at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences

Boris Radosavljevic et al. have self-archived Report on the Survey of Digital Data Management Practices at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

Here's an excerpt:

The GeoDataNode project, funded by the Federal Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF) conducted a survey of data management practices at GFZ. The aim was to assess the state of current practices and needs, and their alignment to institutional and national guidelines for data management. The target audience included scientific and technical employees at all levels. A response rate of 24% of the target demographic was achieved. The survey revealed a general need for improvement and structuring of research data handling. This includes provision of adequate storage space, back-up schedules, and the familiarization of young researchers with good scientific practice.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Too Many Tags Spoil the Metadata: Investigating the Knowledge Management of Scientific Research with Semantic Web Technologies"

Samantha Kanza, Nicholas Gibbins, and Jeremy G. Frey have published "Too Many Tags Spoil the Metadata: Investigating the Knowledge Management of Scientific Research with Semantic Web Technologies" in the Journal of Cheminformatics.

Here's an excerpt:

Previous studies of Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) in academia and industry have identified semantic web technologies as a means for organising scientific documents to improve current workflows and knowledge management practices. In this paper, we present a qualitative, user-centred study of researcher requirements and practices, based on a series of discipline-specific focus groups. We developed a prototype semantic ELN to serve as a discussion aid for these focus groups, and to help us explore the technical readiness of a range of semantic web technologies. While these technologies showed potential, existing tools for semantic annotation were not well-received by our focus groups, and need to be refined before they can be used to enhance current researcher practices.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Establishing a Research Data Management Service on a Health Sciences Campus"

Kathryn Vela and Nancy Shin have published "Establishing a Research Data Management Service on a Health Sciences Campus" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Objective: Given the increasing need for research data management support and education, the Spokane Academic Library at Washington State University (WSU) sought to determine the data management practices, perceptions, and needs of researchers on the WSU Spokane health sciences campus.

Methods: A 23-question online survey was distributed to WSU researchers and research support staff through the campus listserv. This online survey addressed data organization, documentation, storage & backup, security, preservation, and sharing, as well as challenges and desired support services.

Results: Survey results indicated that there was a clear need for more instruction with regard to data management planning, particularly as data management planning addresses the areas of metadata design, data sharing, data security, and data storage and backup.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Case Study: the University of Glasgow’s Digital Preservation Journey 2017-2019"

Alison Spence, Valerie McCutcheon, and Matt Mahon have published "Case Study: the University of Glasgow's Digital Preservation Journey 2017-2019" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

This case study documents the University of Glasgow's digital preservation journey during 2017 and 2018. The University recognized that action was required to ensure the long-term preservation of key corporate records and archival material. Staff from the University’s Digital Preservation Working Group were therefore tasked with identifying the University’s priorities and requirements for preserving its key records, with the aim of producing recommendations for a preservation programme. Knowledge and skills were enhanced by participating in a national digital preservation pilot project and learning from practitioners through workshops and information exchange. The case study shares our reflections on the questions which emerged about metadata, workflows and integrating systems. A key priority will be to engage the support of key decision makers within the University, as it was emphasized repeatedly that successful digital preservation depends as much on resources and organizational strategy as it does on technology. Two of the authors have a particular interest in terminology and we share our work to examine digital preservation’s confusing and obscure vocabulary. We conclude that transforming digital preservation into standard practice within organizations can best be achieved through continued collaboration within the digital preservation community.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Researchers May Need Additional Data Curation Support "

Robin E. Miller has published "Researchers May Need Additional Data Curation Support " in Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.

Here's an excerpt:

Twelve data curation activities were identified as "highly rated" services that academic institutions could focus on providing to researchers. Documentation, Secure Storage, Quality Assurance, and Persistent Identifier were the data curation activities that the majority of participants rated as "most important." Participants identified the data curation practices in place at their institutions, including documentation (80%), secure storage (75%), chain of custody (64%), metadata (63%), file inventory or manifest (58%), data visualization (58%), versioning (56%), file format transformations (55%), and quality assurance (52%). Participants reported low levels of satisfaction with their institutions’ data curation activities.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Assessing Data Management Support Needs of Bioengineering and Biomedical Research Faculty"

Christie A. Wiley and Margaret H. Burnette have published "Assessing Data Management Support Needs of Bioengineering and Biomedical Research Faculty" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Results: This study revealed the majority of researchers explore broad research topics, various file storage solutions, generate numerous amounts of data and adhere to differing discipline-specific practices. Researchers expressed both familiarity and unfamiliarity with DMP Tool. Roughly half of the researchers interviewed reported having documented protocols for file names, file backup, and file storage. Findings also suggest that there is ambiguity about what it means to share research data and confusion about terminology such as "repository" and "data deposit". Many researchers equate publication to data sharing.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap