Étiquette : research data

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Ten Simple Rules for the Care and Feeding of Scientific Data

“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

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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

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Research libraries’ new role in research data management…

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

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Enhanced Publications Data Models and Information Systems …

Enhanced Publications: Data Models and Information Systems :

““Enhanced publications” are commonly intended as digital publications that consist of a mandatory narrative part (the description of the research conducted) plus related “parts”, such as datasets, other publications, images, tables, workflows, devices. The state-of-the-art on information systems for enhanced publications has today reached the point where some kind of common understanding is required, in order to provide the methodology and language for scientists to compare, analyse, or simply discuss the multitude of solutions in the field. In this paper, we thoroughly examined the literature with a two-fold aim: firstly, introducing the terminology required to describe and compare structural and semantic features of existing enhanced publication data models; secondly, proposing a classification of enhanced publication information systems based on their main functional goals.”

URL : Enhanced Publications: Data Models and Information Systems
Alternative URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/index.php/lq/article/view/8445

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Study on the protection of research data and…

Study on the protection of research data and recommendations for access and usage :

“This study is basically divided into four parts. Its objective is to examine the legal requirements for different kinds of usage of research data in an open access infrastructure, such as OpenAIREplus, which links them to publications.
Within the first part, the requirements for legal protection of research data are analysed. In the process, the existing legal framework regarding potentially relevant intellectual property (IP) rights is analysed from different perspectives: first from the general European perspective and subsequently from that of selected EU Member States (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK).
It should be noted that the European legal framework is partly harmonised in the field of copyright and largely harmonised in the field of the sui generis database protection right by EU directives. Thus, the national regulations are quite similar in many respects. National differences are described following the section on national implementation in Chapter 2.5.
Despite European harmonisation, the perhaps surprising outcome of the analysis is that there are some areas of dis-harmonisation between the different Member States. One very significant example of dis-harmonisation is the “exception for scientific research” to the sui generis database right. It is not mandatory for this exception to be introduced into national legislation and it seems that every Member State has its own interpretation of the underlying directive. As it is drafted at the moment, the exception is to all intents and purposes useless.
Another area that causes difficulties is the question of who becomes the rightholder of the sui generis right in a database that is created by a public body or in the course of publicly funded research. Indeed it is far from clear. Some might say the research institution or the funding agency or both become the rightholder. But of the legal regimes under consideration in this study, the only jurisdiction with clear regulation on this matter is the Netherlands and it generally denies a public authority the right to exercise the exclusive database right.
Additionally, it is still unclear whether linking, or at least deep linking, should be seen as a relevant act of communication to the public. There are contradictory judgments at the level of the Member States. However, at least this question will soon be clarified in the scope of an actual reference to the European Court of Justice(ECJ).

The second part of the study is dedicated to the scope of protection of the potentially relevant IP rights. First there is an analysis of whether different types of usage, such as linking, access or mining, infringe the different kinds of IP rights. Secondly, a “legal prototype of an e-infrastructure”, based on selected usage scenarios that may occur during the use of e-infrastructures such as OpenAIREplus, is evaluated in more detail. The main outcome of this second part is that by far the most important IP right in the context of e-infrastructures such as OpenAIREplus is the sui generis database right, and that it is very likely not possible to use all the described einfrastructure features without the consent of the respective rightholder(s).

The third part is an examination of some relevant licensing issues. Within this part of the study, different licence models are analysed in order to identify the licence that is best suited to the aim of Open Access, especially in the context of the infrastructure of OpenAIREplus. The result is that the upcoming CC License version 4.0 will probably be the one best suited to this kind of infrastructure. Within the last part, some recommendations are given on improving the rights situation in relation to research data. To respond to the fact that the scientific research exception as presently formulated is rather useless, it is suggested that a new and broader mandatory research exception be introduced on a European level. To achieve legal interoperability of different databases and e-infrastructures, it is recommended that all of them should license their data under the upcoming CC License version 4.0.”

URL : Study on the protection of research data and recommendations for access and usage

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Disciplinary differences in faculty research data management practices…

Disciplinary differences in faculty research data management practices and perspectives :

“Academic librarians are increasingly engaging in data curation by providing infrastructure (e.g., institutional repositories) and offering services (e.g., data management plan consultations) to support the management of research data on their campuses. Efforts to develop these resources may benefit from a greater understanding of disciplinary differences in research data management needs. After conducting a survey of data management practices and perspectives at our research university, we categorized faculty members into four research domains—arts and humanities, social sciences, medical sciences, and basic sciences—and analyzed variations in their patterns of survey responses. We found statistically significant differences among the four research domains for nearly every survey item, revealing important disciplinary distinctions in data management actions, attitudes, and interest in support services. Serious consideration of both the similarities and dissimilarities among disciplines will help guide academic librarians and other data curation professionals in developing a range of data-management services that can be tailored to the unique needs of different scholarly researchers.”

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/8.2.5

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Datasharing guía práctica para compartir datos de investigación…

Datasharing: guía práctica para compartir datos de investigación :

“Asociar los datos de investigación a la publicación favorece que la comunidad científica los reutilice, pero no tiene suficientes garantías de preservación. Almacenarlos en bases de datos solventa esta contingencia y aporta visibilidad, pero en España no existen demasiados servicios de estas características. Por esta razón, se describen, evalúan y exponen los pros y contras de depósitos de datos multidisciplinares extranjeros que pueden ser de utilidad para investigadores y gestores de información: Dryad, Figshare, Zenodo y Dataverse. Todavía es pronto para escoger de forma óptima y definitiva entre una u otra aplicación, por lo que se concluye con unas recomendaciones que orienten a la comunidad de usuarios e intermediarios.”

“To associate research data to the published results favors their reuse by the scientific community, but this does not afford sufficient guarantees of preservation. To store them in databases solves this contingency and provides visibility, but in Spain there are not many services of this kind. For this reason, we describe, evaluate and discuss the pros and cons of foreign multidisciplinary data repositories that can be useful for researchers and information managers: Dryad, Figshare, Zenodo and Dataverse. It is still early to choose optimally and definitively one or the other application, so we conclude with recommendations to guide the user community and intermediaries.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/20907/