"Towards Narrowing the Curation Gap—Theoretical Considerations and Lessons Learned from Decades of Practice"

Ana Sesartić, Andreas Fischlin, and Matthias Töwe ave published "Towards Narrowing the Curation Gap-Theoretical Considerations and Lessons Learned from Decades of Practice" in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.

Here's an excerpt:

Research as a digital enterprise has created new, often poorly addressed challenges for the management and curation of research to ensure continuity, transparency, and accountability. There is a common misunderstanding that curation can be considered at a later point in the research cycle or delegated or that it is too burdensome or too expensive due to a lack of efficient tools. This creates a curation gap between research practice and curation needs. We argue that this gap can be narrowed if curators provide attractive support that befits research needs and if researchers consistently manage their work according to generic concepts consistently from the beginning. A rather uniquely long-term case study demonstrates how such concepts have helped to pragmatically implement a research practice intentionally using only minimalist tools for sustained, self-contained archiving since 1989. The paper sketches the concepts underlying three core research activities. (i) handling of research data, (ii) reference management as part of scholarly publishing, and (iii) advancing theories through modelling and simulation. These concepts represent a universally transferable best research practice, while technical details are obviously prone to continuous change. We hope it stimulates researchers to manage research similarly and that curators gain a better understanding of the curation challenges research practice actually faces.

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"The Academic Data Librarian Profession in Canada: History and Future Directions"

S. Vincent Gray and Elizabeth Hill have self-archived "The Academic Data Librarian Profession in Canada: History and Future Directions."

Here's an excerpt:

From the 1970s onward, Canadians have been active in developing services and establishing structures to support the dissemination of data. In recent years the academic data profession in Canada has largely developed around access to data from the national statistics agency, Statistics Canada, and around the services which have been developed to permit access to these data. This chapter will provide a historical background for these activities and explain how current and emerging trends continue to affect the profession.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 6. Over 560 works. Over 200 works added. Live links. Selected abstracts. OA. CC-BY License. Covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, repositories, provenance, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation.

"Scholarly Communication and Data"

Hailey Mooney has self-archived "Scholarly Communication and Data."

Here's an excerpt:

The purpose of this chapter is to provide foundational knowledge for the data librarian by developing an understanding of the place of data within the current paradigm of networked digital scholarly communication. This includes defining the nature of data and data publications, examining the open science movement and its effects on data sharing, and delving into the challenges inherent to the wider integration of data into the scholarly communication system and the academic library

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 6. Over 560 works. Over 200 works added. Live links. Selected abstracts. OA. CC-BY License. Covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, repositories, provenance, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation.

Preserving Transactional Data

The Digital Preservation Coalition, UK Data Service, and Charles Beagrie Ltd. have released Preserving Transactional Data .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This report tackles the requirements for preserving transactional data and the accompanying challenges facing companies and institutions that aim to re-use these data for analysis or research, presenting the issues and strategies which emphasize preservation practices that facilitate re-use and reproducibility.

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UK Survey of Academics 2015

Ithaka S+R has released UK Survey of Academics 2015.

Here's an excerpt:

This report is the second Ithaka S+R / Jisc / RLUK survey of UK academics. It asks of the UK research community their views on resource discovery, their use of these resources (online and digital), attitudes to research data management, and much more. It provides a powerful insight into how researchers view their own behaviour and the research environment within the UK today.

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"Cloud-Based Big Data Management and Analytics for Scholarly Resources: Current Trends, Challenges and Scope for Future Research"

Samiya Khan, Kashish A. Shakil, and Mansaf Alam have self-archived "Cloud-Based Big Data Management and Analytics for Scholarly Resources: Current Trends, Challenges and Scope for Future Research."

Here's an excerpt:

With the shifting focus of organizations and governments towards digitization of academic and technical documents, there has been an increasing need to use this reserve of scholarly documents for developing applications that can facilitate and aid in better management of research. In addition to this, the evolving nature of research problems has made them essentially interdisciplinary. As a result, there is a growing need for scholarly applications like collaborator discovery, expert finding and research recommendation systems. This research paper reviews the current trends and identifies the challenges existing in the architecture, services and applications of big scholarly data platform with a specific focus on directions for future research.

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"A Vision for Open Cyber-Scholarly Infrastructures"

Costantino Thanos has published "A Vision for Open Cyber-Scholarly Infrastructures" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

The characteristics of modern science, i.e., data-intensive, multidisciplinary, open, and heavily dependent on Internet technologies, entail the creation of a linked scholarly record that is online and open. Instrumental in making this vision happen is the development of the next generation of Open Cyber-Scholarly Infrastructures (OCIs), i.e., enablers of an open, evolvable, and extensible scholarly ecosystem. The paper delineates the evolving scenario of the modern scholarly record and describes the functionality of future OCIs as well as the radical changes in scholarly practices including new reading, learning, and information-seeking practices enabled by OCIs.

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"Revisiting the Data Lifecycle with Big Data Curation"

Line Pouchard has published "Revisiting the Data Lifecycle with Big Data Curation" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

As science becomes more data-intensive and collaborative, researchers increasingly use larger and more complex data to answer research questions. The capacity of storage infrastructure, the increased sophistication and deployment of sensors, the ubiquitous availability of computer clusters, the development of new analysis techniques, and larger collaborations allow researchers to address grand societal challenges in a way that is unprecedented. In parallel, research data repositories have been built to host research data in response to the requirements of sponsors that research data be publicly available. Libraries are re-inventing themselves to respond to a growing demand to manage, store, curate and preserve the data produced in the course of publicly funded research. As librarians and data managers are developing the tools and knowledge they need to meet these new expectations, they inevitably encounter conversations around Big Data. This paper explores definitions of Big Data that have coalesced in the last decade around four commonly mentioned characteristics: volume, variety, velocity, and veracity. We highlight the issues associated with each characteristic, particularly their impact on data management and curation. We use the methodological framework of the data life cycle model, assessing two models developed in the context of Big Data projects and find them lacking. We propose a Big Data life cycle model that includes activities focused on Big Data and more closely integrates curation with the research life cycle. These activities include planning, acquiring, preparing, analyzing, preserving, and discovering, with describing the data and assuring quality being an integral part of each activity. We discuss the relationship between institutional data curation repositories and new long-term data resources associated with high performance computing centers, and reproducibility in computational science. We apply this model by mapping the four characteristics of Big Data outlined above to each of the activities in the model. This mapping produces a set of questions that practitioners should be asking in a Big Data project

The article is under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

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Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 6

Digital Scholarship has released Version 6 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography. This selective bibliography includes over 560 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions. Over 200 new works have been added to the bibliography since version five.

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

Most sources have been published from January 2009 through May 2016; 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.

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An Analytical Review of Text and Data Mining Practices and Approaches in Europe

OpenForum Europe has released An Analytical Review of Text and Data Mining Practices and Approaches in Europe: Policy Recommendations in View of the Upcoming Copyright Legislative Proposal.

Here's an excerpt:

Europe needs a regime which enables any researcher, citizen, company or other entity to engage in TDM activities, using material to which they have lawful access, wherever they feel there is a good idea. The exact commercial rewards can be managed at subsequent stages, depending on the implementation of the mining outcome. The protection could be considered at the point at which some clearly commercially beneficial project, product, service, business or company has emerged.

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"Research Library Associations Endorse Open Data Accord"

ARL has released "Research Library Associations Endorse Open Data Accord."

Here's an excerpt:

IARLA [International Alliance of Research Library Associations] views the Science International accord on "Open Data in a Big Data World" as an important step towards creating and enabling this common vision of the importance of open data. In setting out principles for open data that are derived from emerging practices within the scientific community, the accord lends the voice of a key stakeholder to the case for open data and provides a practical road map for the implementation of open data at the global level.

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"Are Scientific Data Repositories Coping with Research Data Publishing?"

Massimiliano Assante et al. have published "Are Scientific Data Repositories Coping with Research Data Publishing?" in Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This study analyses the solutions offered by generalist scientific data repositories, i.e., repositories supporting the deposition of any type of research data. These repositories cannot make any assumption on the application domain. They are actually called to face with the almost open ended typologies of data used in science. The current practices promoted by such repositories are analysed with respect to eight key aspects of data publishing, i.e., dataset formatting, documentation, licensing, publication costs, validation, availability, discovery and access, and citation. From this analysis it emerges that these repositories implement well consolidated practices and pragmatic solutions for literature repositories. These practices and solutions can not totally meet the needs of management and use of datasets resources, especially in a context where rapid technological changes continuously open new exploitation prospects.

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"Assessment of and Response to Data Needs of Clinical and Translational Science Researchers and Beyond"

Hannah F. Norton et al. have published "Assessment of and Response to Data Needs of Clinical and Translational Science Researchers and Beyond" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

As universities and libraries grapple with data management and "big data," the need for data management solutions across disciplines is particularly relevant in clinical and translational science (CTS) research, which is designed to traverse disciplinary and institutional boundaries. At the University of Florida Health Science Center Library, a team of librarians undertook an assessment of the research data management needs of CTS researchers, including an online assessment and follow-up one-on-one interviews.

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Disciplinary Differences in Opening Research Data

PASTEUR4OA has released Disciplinary Differences in Opening Research Data .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This briefing paper presents the current state of open research data across academic disciplines. It describes disciplinary characteristics inhibiting a larger take-up of open research data mandates. Additionally it presents the current strategies and policies established by funders, institutions, journals and data service providers alongside general data policies.

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"Developing Library GIS Services for Humanities and Social Science: An Action Research Approach"

College & Research Libraries has released an e-print of "Developing Library GIS Services for Humanities and Social Science: An Action Research Approach" by Ningning Kong, Michael Fosmire, and Benjamin Dewayne Branch.

Here's an excerpt:

In the academic libraries' efforts to support digital humanities and social science, GIS service plays an important role. However, there is no general service model existing about how libraries can develop GIS services to best engage with digital humanities and social science. In this study, we adopted the action research method to develop and improve our service model. Our results suggested that a library's GIS service can support humanities and social science from the research collaboration, learning support, and outreach perspectives, with different focuses according to the stages of learning and research. The research framework adopted in this study not only can serve as an efficient tool for developing GIS services, but also can be expanded to other library service areas.

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"Data Management Plan Requirements for Campus Grant Competitions: Opportunities for Research Data Services Assessment and Outreach"

Andrew M. Johnson and Shelley Knuth have published "Data Management Plan Requirements for Campus Grant Competitions: Opportunities for Research Data Services Assessment and Outreach" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Objective: To examine the effects of research data services (RDS) on the quality of data management plans (DMPs) required for a campus-level faculty grant competition, as well as to explore opportunities that the local DMP requirement presented for RDS outreach. . . .

Results: Analyses showed that RDS consultations had a statistically significant effect on DMP scores. Differences between DMP scores for funded versus unfunded proposals and among disciplinary categories were not significant. The DMP requirement also provided a number of both expected and unexpected outreach opportunities for RDS services.

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"Requirements on Long-Term Accessibility and Preservation of Research Results with Particular Regard to Their Provenance"

Andreas Weber and Claudia Piesche have published "Requirements on Long-Term Accessibility and Preservation of Research Results with Particular Regard to Their Provenance" in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.

Here's an excerpt:

In this article we describe the considerations regarding the implementation of a local research data repository for the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 840. The main focus will be on the examination of requirements for, and an agenda of, a possible technical implementation. Requirements were derived from a more theoretical examination of similar projects and relevant literature, diverse discussions with researchers and project leaders, by analysis of existing publication data, and finally the prototypical implementation with refining iterations.

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"Congress Wants to Turn Obama’s Open Data Actions into Law"

Representative Derek Kilmer has released "Congress Wants to Turn Obama's Open Data Actions into Law."

Here's an excerpt:

A new bill introduced Thursday would give a legislative basis to a number of open data initiatives already underway in the federal government under executive order.

The Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act, introduced by Reps. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., and Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, would build upon a number open data policies from the Obama administration that push federal agencies to make as much data as possible free for the public to use.

A Senate version of the bill will also soon be introduced by Sens. Brian Schatz, D-HI, and Ben Sasse, R-Neb.

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Building Blocks: Laying the Foundation for a Research Data Management Program

OCLC Research has released Building Blocks: Laying the Foundation for a Research Data Management Program.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Many research libraries are taking on a new role to support the research data management needs of their researchers and of their universities. In many cases, there are few resources to support the activity and a single librarian may have only the title or responsibility to get started. This document begins by suggesting very low-overhead ways to start a management program and goes on to describe services that can be added as possible to build out the program. References to many other resources are included.

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Presentations from the 8th Annual University of Massachusetts and New England Area Librarian e-Science Symposium

eScholarship@UMM has released presentations from the 8th Annual University of Massachusetts and New England Area Librarian e-Science Symposium.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The theme for the 2016 University of Massachusetts and New England Area Librarian e-Science Symposium: "Library Research Data Services: Putting Ideas into Action"

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"Implementing Research Data Management Services in a Canadian Context"

Tess Grynoch has published "Implementing Research Data Management Services in a Canadian Context" in the Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management.

Here's an excerpt:

Research data management (RDM) has become an increasingly pressing issue for academic libraries as they strive to assist researchers in addressing new public funding requirements surrounding data dissemination and preservation. Briney, Goben, & Zilinski (2015) reviewed several characteristics of RDM service provision efforts by 206 American research universities. Following a similar methodology, the author reviewed RDM service development within Canadian research universities and compared the results to the American efforts. The main area requiring development in Canada is the provision of RDM services. Therefore, some current best practices for implementing RDM services were gathered through a literature review. The successful approaches highlighted in the literature include awareness of funder and institutional data policies, reaching out to data service providers on campus and beyond, understanding researcher data management needs and finding RDM champions, implementing research data services strategically, planning for growth in RDM services, marketing the RDM services, and creating incentives to create data management plans and utilize RDM services.

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Coursera and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Launch MOOC-Based Master’s Degree in Data Science

Coursera and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have launched a MOOC-based Master's Degree in Data Science.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Coursera, a leading online education company known for massive open online courses (MOOCs), today announced a professional data science master's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Home to one of the top five computer science graduate programs in the United States, the University of Illinois will open access to its world-class data science curriculum at a fraction of the cost of a traditional on-campus or online master's degree through the Master of Computer Science in Data Science (MCS-DS) degree on Coursera.

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"Transparency: The Emerging Third Dimension of Open Science and Open Data"

Liz Lyon has published "Transparency: The Emerging Third Dimension of Open Science and Open Data" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper presents an exploration of the concept of research transparency. The policy context is described and situated within the broader arena of open science. This is followed by commentary on transparency within the research process, which includes a brief overview of the related concept of reproducibility and the associated elements of research integrity, fraud and retractions. A two-dimensional model or continuum of open science is considered and the paper builds on this foundation by presenting a three-dimensional model, which includes the additional axis of 'transparency'. The concept is further unpacked and preliminary definitions of key terms are introduced: transparency, transparency action, transparency agent and transparency tool.

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"Migrating 2 and 3D Datasets: Preserving AutoCAD at the Archaeology Data Service"

Katie Green, Kieron Niven, and Georgina Field have published "Migrating 2 and 3D Datasets: Preserving AutoCAD at the Archaeology Data Service" in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.

Here's an excerpt:

The lessons learnt during the largescale CAD migration process presented in this paper provide an important insight into the digital preservation component of Research Data Management practice.

While the overall migration process presented in this paper was not a strict migration according to the OAIS model and in many cases essentially involved "re-archiving" data, the exercise itself was necessary for the long-term preservation of the data and was undertaken in such a way as to achieve the best possible outcome for both the ADS and data consumers. While elements of the process were both laborious and time consuming (and therefore costly), as a result of having to reassess original files in the SIP, this highlights the benefits of normalizing data at the point of ingest and the production of homogenous AIPs to stable, reliable standards and formats, reaffirming the importance of professional Research Data Management and preservation practices.

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"Making Sense of Researcher Services"

Justin Shanks and Kenning Arlitsch have published "Making Sense of Researcher Services" in the Journal of Library Administration.

Here's an excerpt:

In this article we establish three categories (author/researcher identification, academic/professional networking, and reference/citation management) and examine nineteen services that fit into those categories.

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