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

Issues in the Appraisal and Selection of Geospatial Data

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance has released Issues in the Appraisal and Selection of Geospatial Data.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report provides an illuminating background on the problem area, then suggests ways to establish criteria for appraisal and selection decisions for geospatial data. It then proposes some models and processes for appraisal and selection, including tools for the identification and evaluation of data resources and triggers for appraisal and selection, and finishes with further questions for the community to explore.

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Report of the European Commission Public Consultation on Open Research Data

The European Commission has released the Report of the European Commission Public Consultation on Open Research Data.

Here's an excerpt:

The European Commission held a public consultation on open research data on 2 July 2013 in Brussels, which was attended by a variety of stakeholders from the research community, industry, funders, libraries, publishers, infrastructure developers and others. The debate focused on five questions posed by the Commission to structure the debate and can be summarized as follows. Information on the consultation, including the agenda, the list of participants, the list of contributions and the final report are available here: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/node/67533.

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"Data Curation Issues in the Chemical Sciences"

Colin L. Bird, Cerys Willoughby, Simon J. Coles, and Jeremy G. Frey have published "Data Curation Issues in the Chemical Sciences" in a special issue of Information Standards Quarterly on data curation.

Here's an excerpt:

In this article, the authors investigate the extent to which chemists respect the importance of curation in their day-to-day activities in the laboratory or, nowadays, frequently at the computer. They emphasize that an essential ingredient in the curation process is metadata, especially for capturing context, which critical for reproducibility. They also consider the potential roles for librarians and information specialists in assisting with scientific curation, both directly and in training scientists. They assert that curation practice will increasingly emphasize the capture of metadata at the time data and information are created, described as curation at source. Innovative and automated methods for curation will be needed to overcome the perceived burden of curation.

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"Research Data Management at the University of Warwick: Recent Steps towards a Joined-up Approach at a UK University"

Jenny Delasalle has published "Research Data Management at the University of Warwick: Recent Steps towards a Joined-up Approach at a UK University" in LIBREAS. Library Ideas.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper charts the steps taken and possible ways forward for the University of Warwick in its approach to research data management, providing a typical example of a UK research university's approach in two strands: requirements and support. The UK government approach and funding landscape in relation to research data management provided drivers for the University of Warwick to set requirements and provide support, and examples of good practice at other institutions, support from a central national body (the UK Digital Curation Centre) and learning from other universities' experiences all proved valuable to the University of Warwick. Through interviews with researchers at Warwick, various issues and challenges are revealed: perhaps the biggest immediate challenges for Warwick going forward are overcoming scepticism amongst researchers, overcoming costs, and understanding the implications of involving third party companies in research data management. Building technical infrastructure could sit alongside and beyond those immediate steps and beyond the challenges that face one University are those that affect academia as a whole.

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"Mandates and the Contributions of Open Genomic Data"

Jingfeng Xia has published "Mandates and the Contributions of Open Genomic Data" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

This research attempts to seek changing patterns of raw data availability and their correlations with implementations of open mandate policies. With a list of 13,785 journal articles whose authors archived datasets in a popular biomedical data repository after these articles were published in journals, this research uses regression analysis to test the correlations between data contributions and mandate implementations. It finds that both funder-based and publisher-based mandates have a strong impact on scholars' likelihood to contribute to open data repositories. Evidence also suggests that like policies have changed the habit of authors in selecting publishing venues: open access journals have been apparently preferred by those authors whose projects are sponsored by the federal government agencies, and these journals are also highly ranked in the biomedical fields. Various stakeholders, particularly institutional administrators and open access professionals, may find the findings of this research helpful for adjusting data management policies to increase the number of quality free datasets and enhance data usability.

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"Metadata is a Love Note to the Future—UK Higher Education Research Data Management (RDM) Survey"

Martin Hamilton has released "Metadata is a Love Note to the Future—UK Higher Education Research Data Management (RDM) Survey."

Here's an excerpt:

I'm delighted to be able to present here the results of our recent survey of the UK Higher Education community's plans for Research Data Management, along with a little initial analysis and an executive summary. To stay true to the spirit of openness, we have made a redacted version of the raw data available, along with our analysis, using the figshare cloud RDM service.

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European Landscape Study of Research Data Management

SURF has released the European Landscape Study of Research Data Management.

Here's an excerpt:

This report presents the results of an online survey to establish which interventions are already being used by funding agencies, research institutions, national bodies and publishers across the European Union member states and a number of countries outside Europe in order to improve the capacity and skills of researchers in making effective use of research data infrastructures. It also makes recommendations that organisations can adopt to help their researchers. . . .

Interviews with researchers indicate that the main drivers for writing a data management plan are requirements by the funder or the publisher. Nearly half of the research funders who took part in the survey have a policy covering research data management, whilst a quarter of the funders require data management plans as part of the grant application. Data management plans should address data acquisition, use, re-use, storage and protection and the rights of ownership. Just over one third of the responding funding organisations designate a specific organisation for preservation, although no term has been identified.

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Presentations from Research Data Management Forum 10

Presentations from the Research Data Management Forum 10 are now available.

Here are some representative presentations:

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"Out of Cite, Out of Mind: The Current State of Practice, Policy, and Technology for the Citation of Data"

The CODATA-ICSTI Task Group on Data Citation Standards and Practices has published "Out of Cite, Out of Mind: The Current State of Practice, Policy, and Technology for the Citation of Data" (edited by Yvonne M. Socha) in the Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

The use of published digital data, like the use of digitally published literature, depends upon the ability to identify, authenticate, locate, access, and interpret them. Data citations provide necessary support for these functions, as well as other functions such as attribution of credit and establishment of provenance. References to data, however, present challenges not encountered in references to literature. For example, how can one specify a particular subset of data in the absence of familiar conventions such as page numbers or chapters? The traditions and good practices for maintaining the scholarly record by proper references to a work are well established and understood in regard to journal articles and other literature, but attributing credit by bibliographic references to data are not yet so broadly implemented. This report discusses the current state of data citation practices, its supporting infrastructure, a set of guiding principles for implementing data citation, challenges to implementation of good data citation practices, and open research questions

.

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"How Portable Are the Metadata Standards for Scientific Data? A Proposal for a Metadata Infrastructure"

Jian Qin and Kai Li have self-archived "How Portable Are the Metadata Standards for Scientific Data? A Proposal for a Metadata Infrastructure."

Here's an excerpt:

The one-covers-all approach in current metadata standards for scientific data has serious limitations in keeping up with the ever-growing data. This paper reports the findings from a survey to metadata standards in the scientific data domain and argues for the need for a metadata infrastructure. The survey collected 4400+ unique elements from 16 standards and categorized these elements into 9 categories. Findings from the data included that the highest counts of element occurred in the descriptive category and many of them overlapped with DC elements. This pattern also repeated in the elements co-occurred in different standards. A small number of semantically general elements appeared across the largest numbers of standards while the rest of the element co-occurrences formed a long tail with a wide range of specific semantics. The paper discussed implications of the findings in the context of metadata portability and infrastructure and pointed out that large, complex standards and widely varied naming practices are the major hurdles for building a metadata infrastructure.

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"Federal Research Data Requirements Set to Change"

Abigail Goben and Dorothea Salo have published "Federal Research Data Requirements Set to Change" in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt from:

FERPA, HIPAA, FOIA, and other sunshine laws, National Science Foundation data-management plans—grant-funded research data has had compliance strings attached for some time. Attention to research data is now even more heightened following the responses of the federal agencies in August to the Obama Administration's Office for Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directive from February 2013.2 Research libraries will need to educate and partner with researchers to improve understanding and compliance, promote proper archiving of digital data, and expand discovery and reuse of research datasets

.

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Draft Policy on Open Access for Data and Information

The EU e-infrastructure coordination pro-iBiosphere project has released the Draft Policy on Open Access for Data and Information.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The document addresses legal issues that hamper an integrative system for managing biodiversity knowledge in Europe. It describes the importance for scientists to have access to documents and data in order to synthesize disparate information and to facilitate data mining (or similar research techniques). It explores some aspects of copyright and database protection that influence access to and re-use of biodiversity data and information and refers to exceptions and limitations of copyright or database protection provided for within the relevant EU Directives.

The scientists also suggest that publicly funded institutions should refrain from claiming intellectual property rights for biodiversity data and information published or made accessible by them. Re-use of biodiversity data and information for research purposes should be allowed without any form of authorization. The only claims that publicly funded institutions should make are to ensure users fully acknowledge the sources of information that they rely on.

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figshare for Institutions Launched

figshare has launched an instiutional service for research data.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

figshare today announces the launch of 'figshare for Institutions'—a simple and cost-effective software solution for academic and higher education establishments to both securely host and make publicly available its academic research outputs. figshare, allows academic institutions to publish, share and get credit for their research data, hosting videos, datasets, posters, figures and theses in a cost-effective way.

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Special Issue on Research Data Access and Preservation

The latest issue of the Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology focuses on research data access and preservation.

Here's a selection of articles:

  • "Partnerships Between Institutional Repositories, Domain Repositories and Publishers"
  • "The Relevance of Research Data Sharing and Reuse Studies"
  • "Tracking Citations and Altmetrics for Research Data: Challenges and Opportunities"
  • "The Research Data Alliance: Implementing the Technology, Practice and Connections of a Data Infrastructure"
  • "The DCC's Institutional Engagements: Raising Research Data Management Capacity in UK Higher Education"

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"If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them? Data Sharing and Reuse in the Long Tail of Science and Technology"

Jillian C. Wallis, Elizabeth Rolando, and Christine L. Borgman have published "If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them? Data Sharing and Reuse in the Long Tail of Science and Technology" in PLOS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

Research on practices to share and reuse data will inform the design of infrastructure to support data collection, management, and discovery in the long tail of science and technology. These are research domains in which data tend to be local in character, minimally structured, and minimally documented. We report on a ten-year study of the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. We found that CENS researchers are willing to share their data, but few are asked to do so, and in only a few domain areas do their funders or journals require them to deposit data. Few repositories exist to accept data in CENS research areas.. Data sharing tends to occur only through interpersonal exchanges. CENS researchers obtain data from repositories, and occasionally from registries and individuals, to provide context, calibration, or other forms of background for their studies. Neither CENS researchers nor those who request access to CENS data appear to use external data for primary research questions or for replication of studies. CENS researchers are willing to share data if they receive credit and retain first rights to publish their results. Practices of releasing, sharing, and reusing of data in CENS reaffirm the gift culture of scholarship, in which goods are bartered between trusted colleagues rather than treated as commodities.

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Draft Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Preservation Readiness

The Educopia Institute has released Draft Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Preservation Readiness.

Here's an excerpt:

These Guidelines are a first-draft version of our work to distil preservation-readiness steps into an incremental process that an institution of almost any size or type should be able to use to begin maturing its digital newspaper content management practices.

This first draft is being issued for public review and comment here from July 22, 2013-September 20, 2013.

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Preserving Computer-Aided Design (CAD)

The Digital Preservation Coalition has released Preserving Computer-Aided Design (CAD).

Here's an excerpt:

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) systems are used in both industry and academia to create digital models, whether of engineering designs, archaeological dig sites, or virtual worlds. These models can be of long-lasting significance and importance, particularly if they contain irreplaceable data or relate to long-lived products. This report is primarily aimed at those responsible for archives and repositories with CAD content, but may also be useful for creators of CAD content who want to make their models more amenable to preservation. It begins with an introduction to the historical development and basic concepts of CAD systems, then reviews the most pertinent issues associated with preserving CAD models, and indicates the current state of standardization work in the area. The report goes on to present some recent research of relevance to preserving CAD models before drawing conclusions and making recommendations on how archives should handle the CAD models they accept.

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Presentations from Open Repositories 2013

Presentations from Open Repositories 2013 are now available.

Here's a brief selection of talks:

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Helping to Open Up: Improving Knowledge, Capability and Confidence in Making Research Data More Open

The Research Information and Digital Literacies Coalition has released Helping to Open Up: Improving Knowledge, Capability and Confidence in Making Research Data More Open.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report describes a framework for how to address this challenge when designing training and support for opening data, within the broader questions of RDM. Recommendations are set out, relating to:

– putting opening data at the heart of policy

– putting opening data at the heart of training

– deepening and broadening the training

– identifying and disseminating best practice in opening data

– developing institutional and community support

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UC Berkeley School of Information Launches Online Master of Information and Data Science Program

The UC Berkeley School of Information has launched an online Master of Information and Data Science program.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The I School is staking out new master's degree territory in educating data scientists. While other institutions provide individual classes, certificates, or associate master's degrees in data science, the I School has designed a comprehensive and integrated suite of courses that culminate in a capstone course designed to solidify a student's knowledge of the breadth of data science concepts and skills.

The rigorous new 27-unit MIDS program officially begins in January 2014. Aimed at the working professional, the program will be offered online—except for a required, one-week immersion program at the I School's home at South Hall, to meet in person and explore the Bay Area tech environment.

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"Using Data Curation Profiles to Design the Datastar Dataset Registry"

Sarah J. Wright, Wendy A. Kozlowski, Dianne Dietrich, Huda J. Khan, and Gail S. Steinhart have published "Using Data Curation Profiles to Design the Datastar Dataset Registry" in the latest issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

The development of research data services in academic libraries is a topic of concern to many. Cornell University Library's efforts in this area include the Datastar research data registry project. In order to ensure that Datastar development decisions were driven by real user needs, we interviewed researchers and created Data Curation Profiles (DCPs). Researchers supported providing public descriptions of their datasets; attitudes toward dataset citation, provenance, versioning, and domain specific standards for metadata also helped to guide development. These findings, as well as considerations for the use of this particular method for developing research data services in libraries are discussed in detail.

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"Foundations of Data Curation: The Pedagogy and Practice of "Purposeful Work" with Research Data"

Carole L. Palmer, Nicholas M. Weber, Trevor Muñoz, and Allen H. Renear have punlished "Foundations of Data Curation: The Pedagogy and Practice of "Purposeful Work" with Research Data" in the latest issue of Archive Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Increased interest in large-scale, publicly accessible data collections has made data curation critical to the management, preservation, and improvement of research data in the social and natural sciences, as well as the humanities. This paper explicates an approach to data curation education that integrates traditional notions of curation with principles and expertise from library, archival, and computer science. We begin by tracing the emergence of data curation as both a concept and a field of practice related to, but distinct from, both digital curation and data stewardship. This historical account, while far from definitive, considers perspectives from both the sciences and the humanities. Alongside traditional LIS and archival science practices, unique aspects of curation have informed our concept of "purposeful work" with data and, in turn, our pedagogical approach to data curation for the sciences and the humanities.

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"Competencies Required for Digital Curation: An Analysis of Job Advertisements"

Jeonghyun Kim, Edward Warga, and William Moen have published "Competencies Required for Digital Curation: An Analysis of Job Advertisements" in the latest issue of the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

With digital curation's increasingly important role in the fast-paced and data-intensive information environment, there is a need to identify a set of competencies for professionals in this growing field. As part of a curriculum development project funded by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, a total of 173 job advertisements posted between October 2011 and April 2012 were collected from various sources to take into account varying types of professionals in the field of digital curation across North America. Position title, institution types and location, educational background, experience, knowledge and skills, and duties were examined and analyzed. The results of the analysis show that digital curation jobs are characterized by a complex interplay of various skills and knowledge. The findings of this study present emerging requirements for a qualified workforce in the field of digital curation.

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Research Data Management Training for Support Staff: A DaMaRO Project Survey

The DaMaRO Project has released Research Data Management Training for Support Staff: A DaMaRO Project Survey.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

A few weeks ago, in collaboration with our colleagues from the DataPool Project in Southampton, we ran a survey for staff involved in supporting researchers at the University of Oxford. . . .

The survey asked support staff about a range of different research data management tasks. For each task, we asked them how confident they personally felt to advise researchers on this. As it's clearly unrealistic to expect all support staff to advise on all topics, we also asked how confident they felt of their ability to refer researchers to the appropriate person, organization, or resources for advice.

The responses revealed that current average confidence levels are low to moderate at best. Respondents did in general seem slightly more confident about referring researchers elsewhere for advice, but there's still a lot of room for improvement here.

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Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 3

Digital Scholarship has released version 3 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography. This selective bibliography includes over 230 English-language articles and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions.

The "digital curation" concept is still evolving. In "Digital Curation and Trusted Repositories: Steps toward Success," Christopher A. Lee and Helen R. Tibbo define digital curation as follows:

Digital curation involves selection and appraisal by creators and archivists; evolving provision of intellectual access; redundant storage; data transformations; and, for some materials, a commitment to long-term preservation. Digital curation is stewardship that provides for the reproducibility and re-use of authentic digital data and other digital assets. Development of trustworthy and durable digital repositories; principles of sound metadata creation and capture; use of open standards for file formats and data encoding; and the promotion of information management literacy are all essential to the longevity of digital resources and the success of curation efforts.

Most sources have been published from January 2000 through June 2012; 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, italicized links to the publishers' descriptions are provided.

It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

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