Research Data Management and Libraries: Relationships, Activities, Drivers and Influences

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“The management of research data is now a major challenge for research organisations. Vast quantities of born-digital data are being produced in a wide variety of forms at a rapid rate in universities. This paper analyses the contribution of academic libraries to research data management (RDM) in the wider institutional context. In particular it: examines the roles and relationships involved in RDM, identifies the main components of an RDM programme, evaluates the major drivers for RDM activities, and analyses the key factors influencing the shape of RDM developments. The study is written from the perspective of library professionals, analysing data from 26 semi-structured interviews of library staff from different UK institutions. This is an early qualitative contribution to the topic complementing existing quantitative and case study approaches. Results show that although libraries are playing a significant role in RDM, there is uncertainty and variation in the relationship with other stakeholders such as IT services and research support offices. Current emphases in RDM programmes are on developments of policies and guidelines, with some early work on technology infrastructures and support services. Drivers for developments include storage, security, quality, compliance, preservation, and sharing with libraries associated most closely with the last three. The paper also highlights a ‘jurisdictional’ driver in which libraries are claiming a role in this space. A wide range of factors, including governance, resourcing and skills, are identified as influencing ongoing developments. From the analysis, a model is constructed designed to capture the main aspects of an institutional RDM programme. This model helps to clarify the different issues involved in RDM, identifying layers of activity, multiple stakeholders and drivers, and a large number of factors influencing the implementation of any initiative. Institutions may usefully benchmark their activities against the data and model in order to inform ongoing RDM activity.”

URL : Research Data Management and Libraries: Relationships, Activities, Drivers and Influences

DOI : 10.1371/journal.pone.0114734

Guidelines on Recommending Data Repositories as Partners in Publishing Research Data

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“This document summarises guidelines produced by the UK Jisc-funded PREPARDE data publication project on the key issues of repository accreditation. It aims to lay out the principles and the requirements for data repositories intent on providing a dataset as part of the research record and as part of a research publication. The data publication requirements that repository accreditation may support are rapidly changing, hence this paper is intended as a provocation for further discussion and development in the future.”

URL : Guidelines on Recommending Data Repositories as Partners in Publishing Research Data

Alternative URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/9.1.152

Let’s Put Data to Use: Digital Scholarship for the Next Generation

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“The ways in which research data is used and handled continue to capture public attention and are the focus of increasing interest. Electronic publishing is intrinsic to digital data management, and relevant to the fields of data mining, digital publishing and social networks, with their implications for scholarly communication, information services, e-learning, e-business and the cultural heritage sector.

This book presents the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB), held in Thessaloniki, Greece, in June 2014. The conference brings together researchers and practitioners to discuss the many aspects of electronic publishing, and the theme this year is ‘Let’s put data to use: digital scholarship for the next generation’. As well as examining the role of cultural heritage and service organisations in the creation, accessibility, duration and long-term preservation of data, it provides a discussion forum for the appraisal, citation and licensing of research data and the new developments in reviewing, publishing and editorial technology.

The book is divided into sections covering the following topics: open access and open data; knowing the users better; researchers and their needs; specialized content for researchers; publishing and access; and practical aspects of electronic publishing.

Providing an overview of all that is current in the electronic publishing world, this book will be of interest to practitioners, researchers and students in information science, as well as users of electronic publishing.”

URL : Let’s Put Data to Use: Digital Scholarship for the Next Generation

Alternative URL : http://www.ebooks.iospress.nl/book/lets-put-data-to-use-digital-scholarship-for-the-next-generation

Ten Simple Rules for the Care and Feeding of Scientific Data

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“This article offers a short guide to the steps scientists can take to ensure that their data and associated analyses continue to be of value and to be recognized. In just the past few years, hundreds of scholarly papers and reports have been written on questions of data sharing, data provenance, research reproducibility, licensing, attribution, privacy, and more—but our goal here is not to review that literature. Instead, we present a short guide intended for researchers who want to know why it is important to “care for and feed” data, with some practical advice on how to do that. The final section at the close of this work offers links to the types of services referred to throughout the text.”

URL : Ten Simple Rules for the Care and Feeding of Scientific Data

Alternative URL : http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003542

The NSF/NIH Effect: Surveying the Effect of Data Management Requirements on Faculty, Sponsored Programs, and Institutional Repositories

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“The scholarly communication landscape is rapidly changing and nowhere is this more evident than in the field of data management. Mandates by major funding agencies, further expanded by executive order and pending legislation in 2013, require many research grant applicants to provide data management plans for preserving and making their research data openly available. However, do faculty researchers have the requisite skill sets and are their institutions providing the necessary infrastructure to comply with these mandates? To answer these questions, three groups were surveyed in 2012: research and teaching faculty, sponsored programs office staff, and institutional repository librarians. Survey results indicate that while faculty desire to share their data, they often lack the skills to do this effectively. Similarly, while repository managers and sponsored programs offices often provide the necessary infrastructure and knowledge, these resources are not being promoted effectively to faculty. The study offers important insights about services academic libraries can provide to support faculty in their data management efforts: providing tools for sharing research data; assisting with describing, finding, or accessing research data; providing information on copyright and ownership issues associated with data sets; and assisting with writing data management plans.”

URL : http://tigerprints.clemson.edu/lib_pubs/75/

On the Role of Research Data Centres in the Management of Publication-related Research Data

This paper summarizes the findings of an analysis of scientific infrastructure service providers (mainly from Germany but also from other European countries). These service providers are evaluated with regard to their potential services for the management of publication-related research data in the field of social sciences, especially economics. For this purpose we conducted both desk research and an online survey of 46 research data centres (RDCs), library networks and public archives; almost 48% responded to our survey. We find that almost three-quarters of all respondents generally store externally generated research data – which also applies to publication-related data.

Almost 75% of all respondents also store and host the code of computation or the syntax of statistical analyses. If self-compiled software components are used to generate research outputs, only 40% of all respondents accept these software components for storing and hosting. Eight out of ten institutions also take specific action to ensure long-term data preservation. With regard to the documentation of stored and hosted research data, almost 70% of respondents claim to use the metadata schema of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI); Dublin Core is used by 30% (multiple answers were permitted). Almost two-thirds also use persistent identifiers to facilitate citation of these datasets. Three in four also support researchers in creating metadata for their data. Application programming interfaces (APIs) for uploading or searching datasets currently are not yet implemented by any of the respondents. Least common is the use of semantic technologies like RDF.

Concluding, the paper discusses the outcome of our survey in relation to Research Data Centres (RDCs) and the roles and responsibilities of publication-related data archives for journals in the fields of social sciences.”

URL : On the Role of Research Data Centres in the Management of Publication-related Research Data
Alternative URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/index.php/lq/article/view/9356

Research libraries’ new role in research data management…

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Research libraries’ new role in research data management, current trends and visions in Denmark :

“The amount of research data is growing constantly, due to new technology with new potentials for collecting and analysing both digital data and research objects. This growth creates a demand for a coherent IT-infrastructure. Such an infrastructure must be able to provide facilities for storage, preservation and a more open access to data in order to fulfil the demands from the researchers themselves, the research councils and research foundations.
This paper presents the findings of a research project carried out under the auspices of DEFF (Danmarks Elektroniske Fag- og Forskningsbibliotek — Denmark’s Electronic Research Library) to analyse how the Danish universities store, preserve and provide access to research data. It shows that they do not have a common IT-infrastructure for research data management. This paper describes the various paths chosen by individual universities and research institutions, and the background for their strategies of research data management. Among the main reasons for the uneven practices are the lack of a national policy in this field, the different scientific traditions and cultures and the differences in the use and organization of IT-services.
This development contains several perspectives that are of particular relevance to research libraries. As they already curate digital collections and are active in establishing web archives, the research libraries become involved in research and dissemination of knowledge in new ways. This paper gives examples of how The State and University Library’s services facilitate research data management with special regard to digitization of research objects, storage, preservation and sharing of research data.
This paper concludes that the experience and skills of research libraries make the libraries important partners in a research data management infrastructure.”

URL : Research libraries’ new role in research data management, current trends and visions in Denmark
Alternative URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/index.php/lq/article/view/9173