Practices of research data curation in institutional repositories: A qualitative view from repository staff

Authors : Dong Joon Lee, Besiki Stvilia

The importance of managing research data has been emphasized by the government, funding agencies, and scholarly communities. Increased access to research data increases the impact and efficiency of scientific activities and funding.

Thus, many research institutions have established or plan to establish research data curation services as part of their Institutional Repositories (IRs). However, in order to design effective research data curation services in IRs, and to build active research data providers and user communities around those IRs, it is essential to study current data curation practices and provide rich descriptions of the sociotechnical factors and relationships shaping those practices.

Based on 13 interviews with 15 IR staff members from 13 large research universities in the United States, this paper provides a rich, qualitative description of research data curation and use practices in IRs.

In particular, the paper identifies data curation and use activities in IRs, as well as their structures, roles played, skills needed, contradictions and problems present, solutions sought, and workarounds applied.

The paper can inform the development of best practice guides, infrastructure and service templates, as well as education in research data curation in Library and Information Science (LIS) schools.

URL : Practices of research data curation in institutional repositories: A qualitative view from repository staff

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0173987

Setting up a National Research Data Curation Service for Qatar: Challenges and Opportunities

Authors : Arif Shaon, Armin Straube, Krishna Roy Chowdhury

Over the past decade, Qatar has been making considerable progress towards developing a sustainable research culture for the nation. The main driver behind Qatar’s progress in research and innovation is Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development (QF), a private, non-profit organization that aims to utilise research as a catalyst for expanding, diversifying and improving the country’s economy, health and environment.

While this has resulted in a significant growth in the number of research publications produced by Qatari researchers in recent years, a nationally co-ordinated approach is needed to address some of the emerging but increasingly important aspects of research data curation, such as management and publication of research data as important outputs, and their long-term digital preservation.

Qatar National Library (QNL), launched in November 2012 under the umbrella of QF, aims to establish itself as a centre of excellence in Qatar for research data management, curation and publishing to address the research data-related needs of Qatari researchers and academics.

This paper describes QNL’s approach towards establishing a national research data curation service for Qatar, highlighting the associated opportunities and key challenges.

URL : Setting up a National Research Data Curation Service for Qatar: Challenges and Opportunities

Alternative location : http://www.ijdc.net/article/view/515

The State of Assessing Data Stewardship Maturity – An Overview

Author : Ge Peng

Data stewardship encompasses all activities that preserve and improve the information content, accessibility, and usability of data and metadata. Recent regulations, mandates, policies, and guidelines set forth by the U.S. government, federal other, and funding agencies, scientific societies and scholarly publishers, have levied stewardship requirements on digital scientific data.

This elevated level of requirements has increased the need for a formal approach to stewardship activities that supports compliance verification and reporting. Meeting or verifying compliance with stewardship requirements requires assessing the current state, identifying gaps, and, if necessary, defining a roadmap for improvement.

This, however, touches on standards and best practices in multiple knowledge domains. Therefore, data stewardship practitioners, especially these at data repositories or data service centers or associated with data stewardship programs, can benefit from knowledge of existing maturity assessment models.

This article provides an overview of the current state of assessing stewardship maturity for federally funded digital scientific data. A brief description of existing maturity assessment models and related application(s) is provided.

This helps stewardship practitioners to readily obtain basic information about these models. It allows them to evaluate each model’s suitability for their unique verification and improvement needs.

URL : The State of Assessing Data Stewardship Maturity – An Overview

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2018-007

Ouverture et partage des résultats de la recherche dans l’économie de la connaissance européenne : Quelle(s) liberté(s) de circulation pour l’IST?

Auteur/Author : Hans Dillaerts

Au cours de ces dix dernières années, il y a un engagement croissant de l’Union européenne en faveur de l’innovation ouverte, le libre accès et la science ouverte. Notre objectif au sein de cet article est de s’interroger sur les origines de ces politiques et d’en retracer les évolutions et les limites.

L’objectif de cette analyse est également de mettre en avant les injonctions contradictoires que subissent aujourd’hui les chercheurs en matière de publication et de diffusion de l’information scientifique et technique à travers entre autres les problématiques et questionnements liés à la brevetabilité des résultats de recherche financés sur des fonds publics.

URL : https://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_01716543

Data Sustainability and Reuse Pathways of Natural Resources and Environmental Scientists

Author : Yi Shen

This paper presents a multifarious examination of natural resources and environmental scientists’ adventures navigating the policy change towards open access and cultural shift in data management, sharing, and reuse.

Situated in the institutional context of Virginia Tech, a focus group and multiple individual interviews were conducted exploring the domain scientists’ all-around experiences, performances, and perspectives on their collection, adoption, integration, preservation, and management of data.

The results reveal the scientists’ struggles, concerns, and barriers encountered, as well as their shared values, beliefs, passions, and aspirations when working with data. Based on these findings, this study provides suggestions on data modeling and knowledge representation strategies to support the long-term viability, stewardship, accessibility, and sustainability of scientific data.

It also discusses the art of curation as creative scholarship and new opportunities for data librarians and information professionals to mobilize the data revolution.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.01788

Data sharing and reanalysis of randomized controlled trials in leading biomedical journals with a full data sharing policy: survey of studies published in The BMJ and PLOS Medicine

Authors : Florian Naudet, Charlotte Sakarovitch, Perrine Janiaud, Ioana Cristea, Daniele Fanelli, David Moher, John P A Ioannidis

Objectives

To explore the effectiveness of data sharing by randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in journals with a full data sharing policy and to describe potential difficulties encountered in the process of performing reanalyses of the primary outcomes.

Design

Survey of published RCTs.

Setting

PubMed/Medline.

Eligibility criteria

RCTs that had been submitted and published by The BMJ and PLOS Medicine subsequent to the adoption of data sharing policies by these journals.

Main outcome measure

The primary outcome was data availability, defined as the eventual receipt of complete data with clear labelling. Primary outcomes were reanalyzed to assess to what extent studies were reproduced. Difficulties encountered were described.

Results

37 RCTs (21 from The BMJ and 16 from PLOS Medicine) published between 2013 and 2016 met the eligibility criteria. 17/37 (46%, 95% confidence interval 30% to 62%) satisfied the definition of data availability and 14 of the 17 (82%, 59% to 94%) were fully reproduced on all their primary outcomes. Of the remaining RCTs, errors were identified in two but reached similar conclusions and one paper did not provide enough information in the Methods section to reproduce the analyses. Difficulties identified included problems in contacting corresponding authors and lack of resources on their behalf in preparing the datasets. In addition, there was a range of different data sharing practices across study groups.

Conclusions

Data availability was not optimal in two journals with a strong policy for data sharing. When investigators shared data, most reanalyses largely reproduced the original results. Data sharing practices need to become more widespread and streamlined to allow meaningful reanalyses and reuse of data.

 

Scaling Research Data Management Services Along the Maturity Spectrum: Three Institutional Perspectives

Authors : Cinthya Ippoliti, Amy Koshoffer, Renaine Julian, Micah Vandegrift, Devin Soper, Sophie Meridien

Research data services promise to advance many academic libraries’ strategic goals of becoming partners in the research process and integrating library services with modern research workflows. Academic librarians are well positioned to make an impact in this space due to their expertise in managing, curating, and preserving digital information, and a history of engaging with scholarly communications writ large.

Some academic libraries have quickly developed infrastructure and support for every activity ranging from data storage and curation to project management and collaboration, while others are just beginning to think about addressing the data needs of their researchers.

Regardless of which end of the spectrum they identify with, libraries are still seeking to understand the research landscape and define their role in the process.

This article seeks to blend both a general perspective regarding these issues with actual case studies derived from three institutions, University of Cincinnati, Oklahoma State University, and Florida State University, all of which are at different levels of implementation, maturity, and campus involvement.

URL : Scaling Research Data Management Services Along the Maturity Spectrum: Three Institutional Perspectives

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/WZ8FN