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

"Building a Culture of Data Sharing: Policy Design and Implementation for Research Data Management in Development Research"

Cameron Neylon has published "Building a Culture of Data Sharing: Policy Design and Implementation for Research Data Management in Development Research" in Research Ideas and Outcomes.

Here's an excerpt:

The project had two core findings. First that the shift from an aim of changing behaviour, to changing culture, has both subtle and profound implications for policy design and implementation. A particular finding is that the single point of contact that many data management and sharing policies create where a Data Management Plan is required at grant submission but then not further utilised is at best neutral and likely counter productive in supporting change in researcher culture.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

The State of Open Data Report 2017

Figshare has released The State of Open Data Report 2017.

Here's an excerpt:

Its key finding is that open data has become more embedded in the research community—82% of survey respondents are aware of open data sets and more researchers are curating their data for sharing.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation 2017: An NDSA Report

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance has released Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation 2017: An NDSA Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The 2017 Digital Preservation Staffing Survey provides a useful snapshot of the way digital preservation is accomplished in 2017 and how its practitioners feel about the effectiveness of their current organizational structures. It also builds on the 2012 survey and begins to establish data with which the digital preservation community can identify trends in staffing in the field.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"The Evolution, Approval and Implementation of the U.S. Geological Survey Science Data Lifecycle Model"

John L. Faundeen and Vivian B. Hutchison have published "The Evolution, Approval and Implementation of the U.S. Geological Survey Science Data Lifecycle Model" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper details how the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Community for Data Integration (CDI) Data Management Working Group developed a Science Data Lifecycle Model, and the role the Model plays in shaping agency-wide policies and data management applications. Starting with an extensive literature review of existing data lifecycle models, representatives from various backgrounds in USGS attended a two-day meeting where the basic elements for the Science Data Lifecycle Model were determined. Refinements and reviews spanned two years, leading to finalization of the model and documentation in a formal agency publication.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Pursuing Best Performance in Research Data Management by Using the Capability Maturity Model and Rubrics "

Jian Qinet al. have published "Pursuing Best Performance in Research Data Management by Using the Capability Maturity Model and Rubrics " in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

The RDM CMM [Capability Maturity Model] includes five chapters describing five key process areas for research data management: 1) data management in general; 2) data acquisition, processing, and quality assurance; 3) data description and representation; 4) data dissemination; and 5) repository services and preservation. In each chapter, key data management practices are organized into four groups according to the CMM's generic processes: commitment to perform, ability to perform, tasks performed, and process assessment (combining the original measurement and verification). For each area of practice, the document provides a rubric to help projects or organizations assess their level of maturity in RDM.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 8 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Version 8 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography Released

Digital Scholarship has released Version 8 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography. This selective bibliography includes over 680 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions. Printed from the HTML page, it is over 130 pages long.

The Research Data Curation Bibliography covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, provenance, repositories, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation.

Most sources have been published from January 2009 through September 2017; 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.

The Research Data Curation Bibliography is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works and 2012 Supplement | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Scientific Data From and for the Citizen"

Sven Schade et al. have published "Scientific Data From and for the Citizen" in First Monday.

Here's an excerpt:

Powered by advances of technology, today's Citizen Science projects cover a wide range of thematic areas and are carried out from local to global levels. This wealth of activities creates an abundance of data, for example, in the forms of observations submitted by mobile phones; readings of low-cost sensors; or more general information about peoples’ activities. The management and possible sharing of this data has become a research topic in its own right. We conducted a survey in the summer of 2015 in order to collectively analyze the state of play in Citizen Science. This paper summarizes our main findings related to data access, standardization and data preservation. We provide examples of good practices in each of these areas and outline actions to address identified challenges.

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100% Online Professional Science Master’s Degree in Digital Curation at UNC Chapel Hill Announced

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has announced its new Professional Science Master's Degree in Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This innovative, 100% online program is now accepting applications for the initial cohort of students who will begin classes in January 2018. Deadline to apply for January admission is October 10, 2017.

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"50 Years of Social Science Data Services: A Case Study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison"

Chiu-chuang Lu Chou has published "50 Years of Social Science Data Services: A Case Study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison" in The International Journal of Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

The Data and Information Services Center (DISC), formerly known as the Data and Program Library Services (DPLS) has provided learning, teaching and research support to students, staff and faculty in social sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 50 years. What changes have our organization, collections, and services experienced? How has DISC evolved with the advancement of technology? What role does DISC play in the current and future landscape of social science data services on our campus and beyond? This paper gives answers to these questions and recommends a few simple steps in adding social science data services in academic libraries.

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"Searching Data: A Review of Observational Data Retrieval Practices"

Kathleen Gregory et al. have self-archived "Searching Data: A Review of Observational Data Retrieval Practices."

Here's an excerpt:

A cross-disciplinary examination of the user behaviours involved in seeking and evaluating data is surprisingly absent from the research data discussion. This review explores the data retrieval literature to identify commonalities in how users search for and evaluate observational research data. Two analytical frameworks rooted in information retrieval and science technology studies are used to identify key similarities in practices as a first step toward developing a model describing data retrieval.

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"Open Source Software for Digital Preservation Repositories: a Survey"

Carlos André Rosa et al. have self-archived "Open Source Software for Digital Preservation Repositories: a Survey."

Here's an excerpt:

This paper focuses on the state-of-the-art in open-source software solutions for the digital preservation and curation field used to assimilate and disseminate information to designated audiences. Eleven open source projects for digital preservation are surveyed in areas such as supported standards and protocols, strategies for preservation, methodologies for reporting, dynamic of development, targeted operating systems, multilingual support and open source license. Furthermore, five of these open source projects, are further analysed, with focus on features deemed important for the area. Along open source solutions, the paper also briefly surveys the standards and protocols relevant for digital data preservation. The area of digital data preservation repositories has several open source solutions, which can form the base to overcome the challenges to reach mature and reliable digital data preservation.

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"DataCite as a Novel Bibliometric Source: Coverage, Strengths and Limitations"

Nicolas Robinson-Garcia et al. have self-archived "DataCite as a Novel Bibliometric Source: Coverage, Strengths and Limitations."

Here's an excerpt:

This paper explores the characteristics of DataCite to determine its possibilities and potential as a new bibliometric data source to analyze the scholarly production of open data. Open science and the increasing data sharing requirements from governments, funding bodies, institutions and scientific journals has led to a pressing demand for the development of data metrics. As a very first step towards reliable data metrics, we need to better comprehend the limitations and caveats of the information provided by sources of open data. In this paper, we critically examine records downloaded from the DataCite's OAI API and elaborate a series of recommendations regarding the use of this source for bibliometric analyses of open data. We highlight issues related to metadata incompleteness, lack of standardization, and ambiguous definitions of several fields. Despite these limitations, we emphasize DataCite's value and potential to become one of the main sources for data metrics development.

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"14 Years of PID Services at the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB): Connected Frameworks, Research Data and Lessons Learned from a National Research Library Perspective"

Angelina Kraft et al. have published "14 Years of PID Services at the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB): Connected Frameworks, Research Data and Lessons Learned from a National Research Library Perspective" in Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

In an ideal research world, any scientific content should be citable and the coherent content, as well as the citation itself, should be persistent. However, today’s scientists do not only produce traditional research papers—they produce comprehensive digital resources and collections. TIB's mission is to develop a supportive framework for a sustainable access to such digital content—focusing on areas of engineering as well as architecture, chemistry, information technology, mathematics and physics. The term digital content comprises all digitally available resources such as audiovisual media, databases, texts, images, spreadsheets, digital lab journals, multimedia, 3D objects, statistics and software code.

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"Trends in Digital Preservation Capacity and Practice: Results from the 2nd Bi-annual National Digital Stewardship Alliance Storage Survey"

Michelle Gallinger et al. have published "Trends in Digital Preservation Capacity and Practice: Results from the 2nd Bi-annual National Digital Stewardship Alliance Storage Survey" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Research and practice in digital preservation requires a solid foundation of evidence of what is being protected and what practices are being used. The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) storage survey provides a rare opportunity to examine the practices of most major US memory institutions. The repeated, longitudinal design of the NDSA storage surveys offer a rare opportunity to more reliably detect trends within and among preservation institutions rather than the typical surveys of digital preservation, which are based on one-time measures and convenience (Internet-based) samples. The survey was conducted in 2011 and in 2013. The results from these surveys have revealed notable trends, including continuity of practice within organizations over time, growth rates of content exceeding predictions, shifts in content availability requirements, and limited adoption of best practices for interval fixity checking and the Trusted Digital Repositories (TDR) checklist. Responses from new memory organizations increased the variety of preservation practice reflected in the survey responses.

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"Open Data: Accountability and Transparency"

Matthew S Mayernik has published "Open Data: Accountability and Transparency" in Big Data & Society.

Here's an excerpt:

Researchers' primary accountabilities are related to meeting the expectations of research competency, not to external standards of data deposition or metadata creation. Likewise, making data open in a transparent way can involve a significant investment of time and resources with no obvious benefits. This paper uses differing notions of accountability and transparency to conceptualize "open data" as the result of ongoing achievements, not one-time acts.

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Research Data Infrastructures in the UK

The Open Research Data Task Force has released Research Data Infrastructures in the UK.

Here's an excerpt:

This report is intended to inform the work of the Open Research Data Task Force, which has been established with the aim of building on the principles set out in Open Research Data Concordat (published in July 2016) to co-ordinate creation of a roadmap to develop the infrastructure for open research data across the UK. As an initial contribution to that work, the report provides an outline of the policy and service infrastructure in the UK as it stands in the first half of 2017, including some comparisons with other countries; and it points to some key areas and issues which require attention.

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"A Reputation Economy: How Individual Reward Considerations Trump Systemic Arguments for Open Access to Data"

Benedikt Fecher et al. have published "A Reputation Economy: How Individual Reward Considerations Trump Systemic Arguments for Open Access to Data" in Palgrave Communications.

Here's an excerpt:

In this article, we explore the question of what drives open access to research data using a survey among 1564 mainly German researchers across all disciplines. We show that, regardless of their disciplinary background, researchers recognize the benefits of open access to research data for both their own research and scientific progress as a whole. Nonetheless, most researchers share their data only selectively. We show that individual reward considerations conflict with widespread data sharing. Based on our results, we present policy implications that are in line with both individual reward considerations and scientific progress.

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"Metadata for Research Data Discovery and Management"

Lizz Jennings has published "Metadata for Research Data Discovery and Management" in Catalogue and Index.

Here's an excerpt:

Requirements for sharing research data have increased in recent years, partly in response to the open science agenda and partly as a means to make better use of data generated using public money. Research funders increased their expectations of researchers in relation to research data sharing, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) was the first Research Council to put the onus on institutions to provide support for this

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Open Data: The Researcher Perspective

Elsevier and the Centre for Science and Technology Studies have released Open Data: The Researcher Perspective.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The study is based on a complementary methods approach consisting of a quantitative analysis of bibliometric and publication data, a global survey of 1,200 researchers and three case studies including in-depth interviews with key individuals involved in data collection, analysis and deposition in the fields of soil science, human genetics and digital humanities.

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"Connecting the Persistent Identifier Ecosystem: Building the Technical and Human Infrastructure for Open Research"

Angela Dappert et al. have published "Connecting the Persistent Identifier Ecosystem: Building the Technical and Human Infrastructure for Open Research" in the Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This article draws on the work of the EU-funded THOR project to take stock of the current state of interoperability across the PID landscape and to discuss the next steps towards an integrated research record. Examples illustrate how this interconnectivity is facilitated technically, as well as social and human challenges in fostering adoption. User stories highlight how this network of persistent identifier services is facilitating good practice in open research and where its limitations lie.

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"An Analysis of Federal Policy on Public Access to Scientific Research Data"

Adam Kriesberg et al. have published "An Analysis of Federal Policy on Public Access to Scientific Research Data" in Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

The 2013 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memo on federally-funded research directed agencies with research and development budgets above $100 million to develop and release plans to increase and broaden access to research results, both published literature and data. The agency responses have generated discussion and interest but are yet to be analyzed and compared. In this paper, we examine how 19 federal agencies responded to the memo, written by John Holdren, on issues of scientific data and the extent of their compliance to the directives outlined in the memo. We present a varied picture of the readiness of federal science agencies to comply with the memo through a comparative analysis and close reading of the contents of these responses.

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"Wide-Open: Accelerating Public Data Release by Automating Detection of Overdue Datasets"

Maxim Grechkin, Hoifung Poon, and Bill Howe have published "Wide-Open: Accelerating Public Data Release by Automating Detection of Overdue Datasets" in PLOS Biology.

Here's an excerpt:

Open data is a vital pillar of open science and a key enabler for reproducibility, data reuse, and novel discoveries. Enforcement of open-data policies, however, largely relies on manual efforts, which invariably lag behind the increasingly automated generation of biological data. To address this problem, we developed a general approach to automatically identify datasets overdue for public release by applying text mining to identify dataset references in published articles and parse query results from repositories to determine if the datasets remain private. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach on 2 popular National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) repositories: Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and Sequence Read Archive (SRA). Our Wide-Open system identified a large number of overdue datasets, which spurred administrators to respond directly by releasing 400 datasets in one week.

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"Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials—A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors"

Darren B. Taichman et al. have published "Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials—A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors" in PLOS Medicine.

Here's an excerpt:

Therefore, ICMJE will require the following as conditions of consideration for publication of a clinical trial report in our member journals:

  1. As of July 1, 2018 manuscripts submitted to ICMJE journals that report the results of clinical trials must contain a data sharing statement as described below.
  2. Clinical trials that begin enrolling participants on or after January 1, 2019 must include a data sharing plan in the trial’s registration. The ICMJE's policy regarding trial registration is explained at www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html. If the data sharing plan changes after registration this should be reflected in the statement submitted and published with the manuscript, and updated in the registry record.

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"A Trust Framework for Online Research Data Services"

Malcolm Wolski, Louise Howard, and Joanna Richardson have published "A Trust Framework for Online Research Data Services" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

There is worldwide interest in the potential of open science to increase the quality, impact, and benefits of science and research. More recently, attention has been focused on aspects such as transparency, quality, and provenance, particularly in regard to data. For industry, citizens, and other researchers to participate in the open science agenda, further work needs to be undertaken to establish trust in research environments. Based on a critical review of the literature, this paper examines the issue of trust in an open science environment, using virtual laboratories as the focus for discussion. A trust framework, which has been developed from an end-user perspective, is proposed as a model for addressing relevant issues within online research data services and tools.

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An Analysis of Open Data and Open Science Policies in Europe, May 2017

SPARC Europe has released An Analysis of Open Data and Open Science Policies in Europe, May 2017 .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Among the report’s most striking findings: 11 of the 28 European Union member states, as well as Norway and Switzerland, have national, research data-related policies in place. Of these, all were implemented in the past eight years, with most having taken effect recently. In about half of the countries, research data is covered under the same policy that applies to Open Access or Open Science.

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