International Journal of Digital Curation
Not a member yet
605 research outputs found
Sort by
The Changing Influence of Journal Data Sharing Policies on Local RDM Practices
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was to examine changes in research data deposit policies of highly ranked journals in the physical and applied sciences between 2014 and 2016, as well as to develop an approach to examining the institutional impact of deposit requirements. Policies from the top ten journals (ranked by impact factor from the Journal Citation Reports) were examined in 2014 and again in 2016 in order to determine if data deposits were required or recommended, and which methods of deposit were listed as options. For all 2016 journals with a required data deposit policy, publication information (2009-2015) for the University of Toronto was pulled from Scopus and departmental affiliation was determined for each article. The results showed that the number of high-impact journals in the physical and applied sciences requiring data deposit is growing. In 2014, 71.2% of journals had no policy, 14.7% had a recommended policy, and 13.9% had a required policy (n=836). In contrast, in 2016, there were 58.5% with no policy, 19.4% with a recommended policy, and 22.0% with a required policy (n=880). It was also evident that U of T chemistry researchers are by far the most heavily affected by these journal data deposit requirements, having published 543 publications, representing 32.7% of all publications in the titles requiring data deposit in 2016. The Python scripts used to retrieve institutional publications based on a list of ISSNs have been released on GitHub so that other institutions can conduct similar research
Modelling the Research Data Lifecycle
No full textThis paper develops and tests a lifecycle model for the preservation of research data by investigating the research practices of scientists. This research is based on a mixed-method approach. An initial study was conducted using case study analytical techniques; insights from these case studies were combined with grounded theory in order to develop a novel model of the Digital Research Data Lifecycle. A broad-based quantitative survey was then constructed to test and extend the components of the model. The major contribution of these research initiatives are the creation of the Digital Research Data Lifecycle, a data lifecycle that provides a generalized model of the research process to better describe and explain both the antecedents and barriers to preservation. The antecedents and barriers to preservation are data management, contextual metadata, file formats, and preservation technologies. The availability of data management support and preservation technologies, the ability to create and manage contextual metadata, and the choices of file formats all significantly effect the preservability of research data
Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative: A Case Study
Get PDFSince its creation nearly a decade ago, the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) Curation Lifecycle Model has become the quintessential framework for understanding digital curation. Organizations and consortia around the world have used the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model as a tool to ensure that all the necessary stages of digital curation are undertaken, to define roles and responsibilities, and to build a framework of standards and technologies for digital curation. Yet, research on the application of the model to large-scale digitization projects as a way of understanding their efforts at digital curation is scant. This paper reports on findings of a qualitative case study analysis of Indiana University Bloomington’s multi-million-dollar Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative (MDPI), employing the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model as a lens for examining the scope and effectiveness of its digital curation efforts. Findings underscore the success of MDPI in performing digital curation by illustrating the ways it implements each of the model’s components. Implications for the application of the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model in understanding digital curation for mass digitization projects are discussed as well as directions for future research
Setting up a National Research Data Curation Service for Qatar: Challenges and Opportunities
No full textOver 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
Operationalizing the Replication Standard: A Case Study of the Data Curation and Verificaiton Workflow for Scholarly Journals
Get PDFIn response to widespread concerns about the integrity of research published in scholarly journals, several initiatives have emerged that are promoting research transparency through access to data underlying published scientific findings. Journal editors, in particular, have made a commitment to research transparency by issuing data policies that require authors to submit their data, code, and documentation to data repositories to allow for public access to the data. In the case of the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) Data Replication Policy, the data also must undergo an independent verification process in which materials are reviewed for quality as a condition of final manuscript publication and acceptance.
Aware of the specialized expertise of the data archives, AJPS called upon the Odum Institute Data Archive to provide a data review service that performs data curation and verification of replication datasets. This article presents a case study of the collaboration between AJPS and the Odum Institute Data Archive to develop a workflow that bridges manuscript publication and data review processes. The case study describes the challenges and the successes of the workflow integration, and offers lessons learned that may be applied by other data archives that are considering expanding their services to include data curation and verification services to support reproducible research
Creating a Community of Data Champions
Get PDFResearch Data Management (RDM) presents an unusual challenge for service providers in Higher Education. There is increased awareness of the need for training in this area but the nature of the discipline-specific practices involved make it difficult to provide training across a multi-disciplinary organisation. Whilst most UK universities now have a research data team of some description, they are often small and rarely have the resources necessary to provide targeted training to the different disciplines and research career stages that they are increasingly expected to support.
This practice paper describes the approach taken at the University of Cambridge to address this problem by creating a community of Data Champions. This collaborative initiative, working with researchers to provide training and advocacy for good RDM practice, allows for more discipline-specific training to be given, researchers to be credited for their expertise and creates an opportunity for those interested in RDM to exchange knowledge with others. The ‘community of practice’ model has been used in many sectors, including Higher Education, to facilitate collaboration across organisational units and this initiative will adopt some of the same principles to improve communication across a decentralised institution. The Data Champions initiative at Cambridge was launched in September 2016 and this paper reports on the early months, plans for building the community in the future and the possible risks associated with this approach to providing RDM services
Building Open-Source Digital Curation Services and Repositories at Scale
Get PDFThe focus of this article is to share several in-progress research and development open-source approaches that seek to design, build, and test digital curation services and repositories that have the potential to scale (the IMLS-funded Fedora DRAS-TIC and the NSF-funded Brown Dog). We also discuss the creation of a big records testbed of justice, human rights, and cultural heritage collections (100 TB and 100 million records), the emergence of Computational Archival Science (CAS), and the resulting efforts at integrating digital curation education and research. We ultimately seek to develop a sustainable community of users and developers, with solutions that serve the international library, archives, and scientific data management communities. We are also focused on digital curation training and education in these innovative environments
Research Data Management Practices: Synergies and Discords between Researchers and Institutions
Get PDFThe aim of this study was to explore the synergies and discords in attitudes towards research data management (RDM) drivers and barriers for both researchers and institutions. Previous work has studied RDM from a single perspective, but not compared researchers’ and institutions’ perspectives. We carried out qualitative interviews with researchers as well as institutional representatives to identify drivers and barriers, and to explore synergies and discords of both towards RDM. We mapped these to a data lifecycle model and found that the contradictions occur at early stages in the lifecycle of data and the synergies occur at the later stages. This means that for future successful RDM, the points of discord at the start of the data lifecycle must be overcome. Finally, we conclude by proposing key recommendations that could help institutions when addressing both researcher and institutional RDM needs
Developing Data Curation Protocols for Digital Projects at Vanderbilt: Une Micro-Histoire
Get PDFThis paper examines the intersection of legacy digital humanities projects and the ongoing development of research data management services at Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Library. Future directions for data management and curation protocols are explored through the lens of a case study: the (re)curation of data from an early 2000s e-edition of Raymond Poggenburg’s Charles Baudelaire: Une Micro-histoire. The vagaries of applying the Library of Congress Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) to the data and metadata of theMicro-histoirewill be addressed. In addition, the balance between curating data and metadata for preservation vs. curating it for (re)use by future researchers is considered in order to suggest future avenues for holistic research data management services at Vanderbilt
Frictionless Data: Making Research Data Quality Visible
Get PDFThere is significant friction in the acquisition, sharing, and reuse of research data. It is estimated that eighty percent of data analysis is invested in the cleaning and mapping of data (Dasu and Johnson,2003). This friction hampers researchers not well versed in data preparation techniques from reusing an ever-increasing amount of data available within research data repositories. Frictionless Data is an ongoing project at Open Knowledge International focused on removing this friction. We are doing this by developing a set of tools, specifications, and best practices for describing, publishing, and validating data. The heart of this project is the “Data Package”, a containerization format for data based on existing practices for publishing open source software. This paper will report on current progress toward that goal