Data Curation, Open Data, and Research Data Management – Page 3

"Data Competency for Academic Librarians: Evaluating Present Trends and Future Prospects"

This paper reports an investigation into the perception of academic librarians on data competency in their daily roles across various library departments in the United States and Canada. . . . The findings reveal a complex engagement pattern with data tasks, with librarians in data-specific roles dedicating a considerable portion of their work to these activities, while the majority engage less frequently, indicating that data tasks are a minor part of their overall responsibilities. . . . Our study identifies a crucial need for improved competencies in data management and collection development. . . Additionally, our findings reveal a critical gap between academic libraries’ demand for data skills and the content coverage in MLIS programs, emphasizing the need for curriculum updates to prepare librarians for the evolving information landscape.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2024.102897

"The Global Lens: Highlighting National Nuances in Researchers’ Attitudes to Open Data"

This report investigates the variations seen in researcher’s attitudes towards open data across Ethiopia, Japan and the United States, using responses from the State of Open Data surveys. Highlighting: what open data is and its importance towards global scientific advancement, outlining methods that were used, outward context and overall suggestions towards policy makers.

Ethiopia and Japan were found to display contrasting responses, with the United States often representing the middle ground. Researchers in Ethiopia show the highest familiarity with FAIR principles (36.50%), support for a national open data mandate (76.96%), and agreement with penalising non-compliance (56.74%). In contrast, Japan has the lowest familiarity with FAIR principles (10.20%), support for a national mandate (41.86%), and agreement with penalties (35.78%). The United States falls in between, with 37.60% familiarity with FAIR principles, 61.22% supporting a national mandate, and 54.09% supporting penalties.

The factors shaping these attitudes, including funding policies, research culture, and individualistic behaviours have also been examined. Recommendations suggest Ethiopia could leverage its strong support by establishing clear national policies, the United States could build on existing federal policies, and Japan may need a more gradual approach, engaging researchers in policy development.

https://tinyurl.com/45xsvc8h

Paywall: "Job Advertisements for Data Visualization in Academic Libraries: A Content Analysis of Job Postings"

The objectives of this study are: i) to identify the responsibilities that professionals working in the DV field are expected to undertake, and ii) to analyze the current stated qualifications and competencies required for DV-related positions.. . . The findings indicated that library professionals in the field of DV are increasingly tasked with a broader spectrum of responsibilities and duties, with a pronounced preference for those demonstrating expertise in cross-disciplinary domains and possessing exceptional general competencies, in addition to the requisite professional qualifications and skills, such as interdisciplinary liaison and commitment to equity and diversity..

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2024.102896

"Re-Use of Research Data in the Social Sciences. Use and Users of Digital Data Archive"

The aim of this paper is to investigate the re-use of research data deposited in digital data archive in the social sciences. The study examines the quantity, type, and purpose of data downloads by analyzing enriched user log data collected from Swiss data archive. The findings show that quantitative datasets are downloaded increasingly from the digital archive and that downloads focus heavily on a small share of the datasets. The most frequently downloaded datasets are survey datasets collected by research organizations offering possibilities for longitudinal studies. Users typically download only one dataset, but a group of heavy downloaders form a remarkable share of all downloads. The main user group downloading data from the archive are students who use the data in their studies. Furthermore, datasets downloaded for research purposes often, but not always, serve to be used in scholarly publications. Enriched log data from data archives offer an interesting macro level perspective on the use and users of the services and help understanding the increasing role of repositories in the social sciences. The study provides insights into the potential of collecting and using log data for studying and evaluating data archive use.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303190

"Factors Influencing Perceptions of Trust in Data Infrastructures"

Trust is an essential pre-condition for the acceptance of digital infrastructures and services. Transparency has been identified as one mechanism for increasing trustworthiness. Yet, it is difficult to assess to which extent and how exactly different aspects of transparency contribute to trust, or potentially impede it in cases of overwhelming complexity of the information provided. To address these issues, we performed two initial studies to help determining the factors that influence or have impact on trust, focusing on transparency across a range of elements associated with data, data infrastructures and virtual research environments. On one hand, we performed a survey among IT experts in the field of data science focusing on quality aspects in the context of re-using and sharing open source software, assessing issues such as the need for documentation, test cases, and accountability. On the other hand, we complemented this with a set of semi-structured interviews with senior researchers to address specific issues of the degree of transparency achievable with different approaches. They include, for example, the amount of transparency we can achieve with approaches from explainable AI, or the usefulness and limitations of data provenance in determining the suitability of data for reuse and others. Specifically, we consider mechanisms on three levels, i.e. technical, process-oriented as well as social mechanisms. Starting from attributes of trust in the "analogue world", we aim to understand which of these can be applied in the digital world, how they differ, and what additional mechanisms need to be established, in order to support trust in complex socio-technological processes and their emergent results when the traditional approaches cannot be applied anymore.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v18i1.921

"Research Data Management in the Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities in the Canadian Context"

In recent years, research funders across the world have implemented mandates for research data management (RDM) that introduce new obligations for researchers seeking funding. Although data work is not new in the humanities, digital research infrastructures, best practices, and the development of highly qualified personnel to support humanist researchers are all still nascent. Responding to these changes, this article offers four contributions to how humanists can consider the role of "data" in their research and succeed in its management. First, we define RDM and data management plans (DMP) and raise some exigent questions regarding their development and maintenance. Second, acknowledging the unsettled status of "data" in the humanities, we offer some conceptual explanations of what data are, and gesture to some ways in which humanists are already (and have always been) engaged in data work. Third, we argue that data work requires conscious design—attention to how data are produced—and that thinking of data work as involving design (e.g., experimental and interpretive work) can help humanists engage more fruitfully in RDM. Fourth, we argue that RDM (and data work, generally) is labour that requires compensation in the form of funding, support, and tools, as well as accreditation and recognition that incentivizes researchers to make RDM an integral part of their research. Finally, we offer a set of concrete recommendations to support humanist RDM in the Canadian context.

https://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.9956

"Recognising Open Research Data in Research Assessment: Overview of Practices and Challenges"

The literature review aims at identifying content and key issues regarding the assessment of ORD practices nationally and internationally. It starts from the observation that research assessment needs to be reformed as they are currently biased towards scientific publications. Internationally, discussions and projects thereon have emerged. To contextualise recORD and this literature review, we first describe international and Swiss initiatives for reforming research assessment and how they include ORD recognition. The remainder of the review follows an innovative methodology as it identifies first core values in responsible research assessment, and second existing frameworks, to thirdly derive propositions to keep in mind when developing concrete ORD-specific research assessment recommendations. In a final section, the review presents further readings and useful weblinks on the recognition of ORD in research assessment.

https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.11060206

"The Products and Multi-Disciplinarity of Data-Centric Tasks: Influences on Data Searchers’ Behaviors and Cognition"

The study sought to answer the following research questions:

RQ 1: How do data-centric tasks with different products and levels of multi-disciplinarity affect data search behaviors?

RQ 2: How do data-centric tasks with different products and levels of multi-disciplinarity affect the utilization of different cognitive systems?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2024.101302

"An Analysis of the Effects of Sharing Research Data, Code, and Preprints on Citations"

In this study, we investigate whether adopting one or more Open Science practices leads to significantly higher citations for an associated publication, which is one form of academic impact. We use a novel dataset known as Open Science Indicators, produced by PLOS and DataSeer, which includes all PLOS publications from 2018 to 2023 as well as a comparison group sampled from the PMC Open Access Subset. In total, we analyze circa 122’000 publications. We calculate publication and author-level citation indicators and use a broad set of control variables to isolate the effect of Open Science Indicators on received citations. We show that Open Science practices are adopted to different degrees across scientific disciplines. We find that the early release of a publication as a preprint correlates with a significant positive citation advantage of about 20.2% on average. We also find that sharing data in an online repository correlates with a smaller yet still positive citation advantage of 4.3% on average. However, we do not find a significant citation advantage for sharing code.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.16171

"Health Data Sharing Attitudes Towards Primary and Secondary Use of Data: A Systematic Review"

Of 2109 studies identified through our search, 116 were included in the qualitative synthesis, yielding a total of 228,501 participants and various types of HD represented: person-generated HD (n = 17 studies and 10,771 participants), personal HD in general (n = 69 studies and 117,054 participants), Biobank data (n = 7 studies and 27,073 participants), genomic data (n = 13 studies and 54,716 participants), and miscellaneous data (n = 10 studies and 18,887 participants). The majority of studies had a moderate level of quality (83 [71.6%] of 116 studies), but varying levels of quality were observed across the included studies. Overall, studies suggest that sharing intentions for primary purposes were observed to be high regardless of data type, and it was higher than sharing intentions for secondary purposes. Sharing for secondary purposes yielded variable findings, where both the highest and the lowest intention rates were observed in the case of studies that explored sharing biobank data (98% and 10%, respectively). Several influencing factors on sharing intentions were identified, such as the type of data recipient, data, consent. Further, concerns related to data sharing that were found to be mutual for all data types included privacy, security, and data access/control, while the perceived benefits included those related to improvements in healthcare. Findings regarding attitudes towards sharing varied significantly across sociodemographic factors and depended on data type and type of use. In most cases, these findings were derived from single studies and therefore warrant confirmations from additional studies. . ..

Sharing health data is a complex issue that is influenced by various factors (the type of health data, the intended use, the data recipient, among others) and these insights could be used to overcome barriers, address people’s concerns, and focus on spreading awareness about the data sharing process and benefits.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2024.102551

"Seek and You May (Not) Find: A Multi-Institutional Analysis of Where Research Data Are Shared"

Research data sharing has become an expected component of scientific research and scholarly publishing practice over the last few decades, due in part to requirements for federally funded research. As part of a larger effort to better understand the workflows and costs of public access to research data, this project conducted a high-level analysis of where academic research data is most frequently shared. To do this, we leveraged the DataCite and Crossref application programming interfaces (APIs) in search of Publisher field elements demonstrating which data repositories were utilized by researchers from six academic research institutions between 2012–2022. In addition, we also ran a preliminary analysis of the quality of the metadata associated with these published datasets, comparing the extent to which information was missing from metadata fields deemed important for public access to research data. Results show that the top 10 publishers accounted for 89.0% to 99.8% of the datasets connected with the institutions in our study. Known data repositories, including institutional data repositories hosted by those institutions, were initially lacking from our sample due to varying metadata standards and practices. We conclude that the metadata quality landscape for published research datasets is uneven; key information, such as author affiliation, is often incomplete or missing from source data repositories and aggregators. To enhance the findability, interoperability, accessibility, and reusability (FAIRness) of research data, we provide a set of concrete recommendations that repositories and data authors can take to improve scholarly metadata associated with shared datasets.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302426

"Data Services at the Academic Library: A Natural History of Horses and Unicorns"

Methods: We used a web-based inventory of 25 academic libraries at U.S. Research 1 (R1) Carnegie institutions to assess the state of data services at university libraries. We categorized and quantified services, and tested for an effect of library resourcing on the size of library data service portfolios.

Results: Support for data management and geospatial services was relatively widespread, with increasing support in areas of data analyses and data visualization. There was significant variation among services in the modality in which they were offered (web, consult, instruction) and library resourcing had a significant effect on the number of data services a library offered.

https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.780

Research Data Management for Arts and Humanities: Intergrating Voices of the Community

Chapter one gives an overview of the European and national policy environment which has given rise to research data management and sharing mandates, as well as the institutional support structures around them. In chapter two, which is dedicated to implementation and everyday practice, the authors of this publication share how their institutions have developed capacities to accommodate data support professions, and also share their own career paths leading to such roles. After the first two chapters have set the stage and recounted the authors’ reflections on these new roles, the rest of the publication highlights and discusses some of the key domain-specificities of research data management in the Arts and Humanities. Chapter 3.1 reflects on the implications of the lack of consensus around the notion of data within the Arts and Humanities domain through a case study of digital critical editions. Chapter 3.2 addresses the challenges around the, essentially, multilingual character of arts and humanities data, with special focus on multilingual vocabularies and thesauri. Chapter 3.3 provides support for research scenarios where open data sharing is either impossible or is difficult due to legal and ethical limitations, and navigates the complexities of intellectual property and the application of regulatory frameworks, including restrictions on text and data mining, and authentication and authorisation in an open world. Clearly, the discourse on data sharing cannot be complete without discussing the current limitations within research assessment and rewards criteria, nor highlighting initiatives which aim to incentivise and reward data sharing in the working/professional contexts of the Working Group’s members. A discussion on rewards can be found in Chapter 3.4. Chapter 3.5 addresses one of the most widely shared data management challenges within the domain and brings together use cases concerning successful collaborations between cultural heritage institutions and arts and humanities research teams. Finally, Chapter 3.6 showcases good practices in long-term archiving

https://tinyurl.com/ycxbrh33

"Assessing Quality Variations in Early Career Researchers’ Data Management Plans"

This paper aims to better understand early career researchers’ (ECRs’) research data management (RDM) competencies by assessing the contents and quality of data management plans (DMPs) developed during a multi-stakeholder RDM course. We also aim to identify differences between DMPs in relation to several background variables (e.g., discipline, course track). The Basics of Research Data Management (BRDM) course has been held in two multi-faculty, research-intensive universities in Finland since 2020. In this study, 223 ECRs’ DMPs created in the BRDM of 2020 – 2022 were assessed, using the recommendations and criteria of the Finnish DMP Evaluation Guide + General Finnish DMP Guidance (FDEG). The median quality of DMPs appeared to be satisfactory. The differences in rating according to FDEG’s three-point performance criteria were statistically insignificant between DMPs developed in separate years, course tracks or disciplines. However, using content analysis, differences were found between disciplines or course tracks regarding DMP’s key characteristics such as sharing, storing, and preserving data. DMPs that contained a data table (DtDMPs) also differed highly significantly from prose DMPs. DtDMPs better acknowledged the data handling needs of different data types and improved the overall quality of a DMP. The results illustrated that the ECRs had learned the basic RDM competencies and grasped their significance to the integrity, reliability, and reusability of data. However, more focused, further training to reach the advanced competency is needed, especially in areas of handling and sharing personal data, legal issues, long-term preserving, and funders’ data policies. Equally important to the cultural change when RDM is an organic part of the research practices is to merge research support services, processes, and infrastructure into the research projects’ processes. Additionally, incentives are needed for sharing and reusing data.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v18i1.873

"More CNI Spring 24′ Meeting Videos Live"

CNI has released eight new videos from its Spring 2024 meeting.

Here are three examples:

The Open Access Tracking Project Is Now 15 Years Old

Peter Suber has announced that the Open Access Tracking Project is now 15 years old. This project has made an invaluable contribution to the Open Access and Open Science movements. Readers are encouraged to considering joining it and posting new works of interest to it. Even occasional contributions are meaningful.

Here is a description of the project from its home page:

OATP is a crowd-sourced social-tagging project running on free software to capture news and comment on open access to research.

Its mission is (1) to create real-time alerts for OA-related news and comment, and (2) to organize knowledge of the field, by tag or subtopic, for easy searching and sharing.

OATP publishes a comprehensive primary feed of new OA developments, and hundreds of smaller secondary feeds on subtopics or subsets, for example, one feed for each project tag, one for each search, and one for each user-created boolean combination of its other feeds.

OATP runs on TagTeam, open-source software developed specifically for OATP and now available for open, tag-based research projects on any topic. See the OATP hub within TagTeam. TagTeam stores all OATP tag records for deduping, export, preservation, modification, and search. OATP started on Connotea and moved to TagTeam in September 2012.

Peter Suber launched OATP in April 2009, and wrote a full-length description of it in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter for May 2009. In mid-2011 OATP became part of the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP).

https://tinyurl.com/m5ku5mxh

Digital Scholarship and DigitalKoans Are Now 19 Years Old

Digital Scholarship and DigitalKoans were established on 4/20/2005. Digital Scholarship provides information and commentary about artificial intelligence, digital copyright, digital curation, open access, research data management, scholarly communication, and other digital information issues. Digital Scholarship is an open access noncommercial publisher. All of its publications are currently under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

DigitalKoans has published over 16,200 posts. Since 2008, over 5,600 job ads have been posted, with slightly over 4,000 of them for digital library jobs.

Digital Scholarship has published the following books and book supplements: the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (2005; published with the Association of Research Libraries), the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition (2009), Digital Scholarship 2009 (2010), Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography (2010), the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 (2011), the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 (2011), the Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 (2011), the Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works (2012), the Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works, 2012 Supplement (2013), and the Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography (2021).

It has also published and updated the following bibliographies, webliographies, and weblogs: the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (1996-2011), the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (2001-2013), the Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography (2005-2021), the Google Books Bibliography (2005-2011), the Institutional Repository Bibliography (2009-2011), the Open Access Journals Bibliography (2010), the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography (2010-2011), the E-science and Academic Libraries Bibliography (2011), the Digital Curation Resource Guide (2012), the Research Data Curation Bibliography (2012-2019), the Altmetrics Bibliography (2013), the Transforming Peer Review Bibliography (2014), the Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography (2018-2023), the Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography (2021), the Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography (2022), Digital Curation Certificate and Master’s Degree Programs (2023), the Academic Libraries and Research Data Management Bibliography (2023), and the Artificial Intelligence and Libraries Bibliography (2023).

"CHORUS Forum: 12 Best Practices for Research Data Sharing — Summary And Comments"

At last month’s CHORUS Forum: 12 Best Practices for Research Data Sharing speakers addressed the Joint Statement on Research Data Sharing by STM, DataCite and Crossref. The forum was moderated by Howard Ratner, Executive Director, CHORUS and sponsored by AIP Publishing, Association of American Publishers, Crossref, GeoScienceWorld, and STM.

https://tinyurl.com/3ubnw4db

"Open Data Ownership and Sharing: Challenges and Opportunities for Application of Fair Principles and a Checklist for Data Managers"

The amount of data generated across various disciplines has been steadily increasing and is projected to experience exponential growth in the foreseeable future. This underscores the pressing need for proficient and streamlined data management. Data has proven to be a crucial tool in addressing complex societal challenges on a global scale. However, the challenge of producing and openly disseminating data that are easily discoverable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) has emerged as a significant concern for policymakers. The potential for data to be repurposed for advancing scientific research and innovation across different disciplines is contingent on its willingness to be shared. This paper employs a systematic literature review to investigate the motivating factors, advantages, and obstacles associated with open data sharing. Additionally, it explores governance frameworks that can create unique opportunities for implementing FAIR principles in real-time scientific research.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafr.2024.101157

Paywall: "Global Status of Dataset Repositories at a Glance: Study Based on OpenDOAR"

Developed countries like the United Kingdom and the USA are primarily involved in the development of institutional open-access repositories comprising significant components of OpenDOAR. The most extensively used software is DSpace. Most data set archives are OAI-PMH compliant but do not follow open-access rules. . . . Furthermore, the study concludes that the number of data sets kept in repositories is insufficient, although the expansion of such repositories has been consistent over the years.

https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-11-2023-0094

"The Future of Data in Research Publishing: From Nice to Have to Need to Have?"

Science policy promotes open access to research data for purposes of transparency and reuse of data in the public interest. We expect demands for open data in scholarly publishing to accelerate, at least partly in response to the opacity of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. Open data should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR), and also trustworthy and verifiable. The current state of open data in scholarly publishing is in transition from ‘nice to have’ to ‘need to have.’ Research data are valuable, interpretable, and verifiable only in context of their origin, and with sufficient infrastructure to facilitate reuse. Making research data useful is expensive; benefits and costs are distributed unevenly. Open data also poses risks for provenance, intellectual property, misuse, and misappropriation in an era of trolls and hallucinating AI algorithms. Scholars and scholarly publishers must make evidentiary data more widely available to promote public trust in research. To make research processes more trustworthy, transparent, and verifiable, stakeholders need to make greater investments in data stewardship and knowledge infrastructures.

https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.b73aae77

"Common Metadata Framework for Research Data Repository: Necessity to Support Open Science"

The present study describes the features of a select number of RDRs and analyzes their metadata practices: Harvard Dataverse, Dryad, Figshare, Zenodo, and the Open Science Framework (OSF). It further examines the total number of metadata elements, common metadata elements, required metadata elements, and item-level metadata. Results indicate that even though Harvard Dataverse has the most metadata elements, Dryad provides rich metadata concerning item level. This study suggests a common metadata framework, richer metadata elements, and more features to make the research data’s interoperability possible from one RDR to another.

https://doi.org/10.1080/19386389.2024.2329370

"The Fair for Research Software Principles after Two Years: An Adoption Update"

It should be noted that while the many activities listed here support increasing FAIRness of research software, most of them do not address aspects of all four of the FAIRness of research software foundational principles. . . . This reflects that the FAIR4RS Principles are aspirational and high-level, and do not contain detailed guidance on how to achieve them. This is because specific technologies and tools are always changing, while the principles are intended to be long-lasting. Consequently, additional work is needed to make it simpler for people wanting to follow the FAIR4RS Principles to know how to practically do so. The following initiatives are assisting in achieving this, with some of these initiatives specifically addressing the range of opportunities for future work identified in 2022 by the FAIR4RS Working Group, which developed the FAIR4RS Principles.

https://www.researchsoft.org/blog/2024-03/

"Publicly Shared Data: A Gap Analysis of Researcher Actions and Institutional Support throughout the Data Life Cycle"

[This report] examines research data management and sharing practices at six research-intensive academic institutions: Cornell University, Duke University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Virginia Tech, and Washington University in St. Louis. Sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (grant #2135874) and part of ARL’s Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative, this report highlights where service gaps may exist between researchers’ needs and the services and support provided by institutions.

https://tinyurl.com/mtdjvecu

"Research Data Management Sustainability: Services, Infrastructure, Accountability, and Planning"

This study aims to update on the status of RDMS service offerings, staffing and funding, and presents them according to the number of years a library has offered the service. This work also investigates RDMS service fulfillment, accountability in providing support, and planning strategies within the same institution sample. Updating the RDMS status, broadening the facets addressed, and presenting the data by cohort provides detail into how services have been maintained or developed so that institutions at a similar stage can make clearer decisions about how to keep RDMS sustainable.

https://tinyurl.com/22cexhrt