International Journal of Digital Curation
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Digital Curation Education and Training: From Digitization to Graduate Curricula to MOOCs
Get PDFThis paper traces the development of digital and data curation curricula. Due to the brief length of this paper, the focus is on North American initiatives and primarily on continuing education programs. It explores the strengths and weaknesses of professional workshops and the creation of graduate-level courses, certificates, degrees and MOOCs, as well as the role of funding agencies in this process. It concludes with an analysis of what is missing and what is needed to create the workforce required to steward digital assets in the foreseeable future
YesWorkflow: A User-Oriented, Language-Independent Tool for Recovering Workflow Information from Scripts
Get PDFScientific workflow management systems offer features for composing complex computational pipelines from modular building blocks, executing the resulting automated workflows, and recording the provenance of data products resulting from workflow runs. Despite the advantages such features provide, many automated workflows continue to be implemented and executed outside of scientific workflow systems due to the convenience and familiarity of scripting languages (such as Perl, Python, R, and MATLAB), and to the high productivity many scientists experience when using these languages. YesWorkflow is a set of software tools that aim to provide such users of scripting languages with many of the benefits of scientific workflow systems. YesWorkflow requires neither the use of a workflow engine nor the overhead of adapting code to run effectively in such a system. Instead, YesWorkflow enables scientists to annotate existing scripts with special comments that reveal the computational modules and dataflows otherwise implicit in these scripts. YesWorkflow tools extract and analyze these comments, represent the scripts in terms of entities based on the typical scientific workflow model, and provide graphical renderings of this workflow-like view of the scripts. Future version of YesWorkflow will also allow the prospective provenance of the data products of these scripts to be queried in ways similar to those available to users of scientific workflow systems
Twenty Years of Data Management in the British Atmospheric Data Centre
Get PDFThe British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) has existed in its present form for 20 years, having been formally created in 1994. It evolved from the GDF (Geophysical Data Facility), a SERC (Science and Engineering Research Council) facility, as a result of research council reform where NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) extended its remit to cover atmospheric data below 10km altitude. With that change the BADC took on data from many other atmospheric sources and started interacting with NERC research programmes. The BADC has now hit early adulthood. Prompted by this milestone, we examine in this paper whether the data centre is creaking at the seams or is looking forward to the prime of its life, gliding effortlessly into the future. Which parts of it are bullet proof and which parts are held together with double-sided sticky tape? Can we expect to see it in its present form in another twenty years’ time? To answer these questions, we examine the interfaces, technology, processes and organisation used in the provision of data centre services by looking at three snapshots in time, 1994, 2004 and 2014, using metrics and reports from the time to compare and contrasts the services using BADC. The repository landscape has changed massively over this period and has moved the focus for technology and development as the broader community followed emerging trends, standards and ways of working. The incorporation of these new ideas has been both a blessing and a curse, providing the data centre staff with plenty of challenges and opportunities. We also discuss key data centre functions including: data discovery, data access, ingestion, data management planning, preservation plans, agreements/licences and data policy, storage and server technology, organisation and funding, and user management. We conclude that the data centre will probably still exist in some form in 2024 and that it will most likely still be reliant on a file system. However, the technology delivering this service will change and the host organisation and funding routes may vary
The long decade of digital preservation in heritage institutions in the Czech Republic: 2002–2014
Get PDFThis paper aims to give state-of-the-art information about digital preservation activities in the Czech Republic during the last decade to an English-speaking audience. We briefly describe major phases of the “digital” projects. These were mainly in libraries, with some references to museums, galleries and archives. We focus on aspects related to the preservation of collected born-digital and digitised content. Even now, digital preservation activities in heritage institutions are often on the periphery of the interest of all stakeholders and the infrastructure supporting digital preservation of data in heritage institutions is not well financed or coordinated. Even though the “long decade”, which lasted from the dramatic events of 2002 until approximately 2014, saw a number of successful projects creating digital data in Czech libraries, the handful of projects which were in part focused on digital preservation were not flexible enough to accommodate user requirements and were failing to meet expectations. There is still much room for further development in the area of long-term preservation of digital data in the Czech Republic. This article is a shortened version of one of the analyses written under the “Strategy of the research, development and innovation for the years 2010–2015” program of the Moravian Library in Brno, Czech Republic
User-Defined Metadata: Using Cues and Changing Perspectives
Get PDFUser-defined metadata is useful for curating and helping to provide context for experiment records, but our previous investigations have demonstrated that simply providing the facility to add metadata is not enough to ensure that metadata is added, let alone to ensure that the metadata is of high quality. For metadata to be useful it first has to be present, but enforcing metadata generation is of no benefit if it is low quality, inconsistent, or irrelevant. Researchers need support. One strategy to encourage more effective metadata creation is to design user interfaces that invite users to add metadata by asking them questions. If we ask users specific questions about their experiments and other activities then we could capture more relevant or useful metadata, although there is a risk that asking the wrong questions may lead to loss of valuable metadata terms or the creation of irrelevant material. In this paper we report on a study to investigate how different questions could be used to generate metadata by eliciting information in three different conditions: free recall, changing perspective by thinking about search terms to help someone else, and providing cues by using a set of topic-based questions. We also investigate how responses varied with different information types. The results of the study show that different terms are created under the different conditions, as expected. The use of cues generates the highest numbers of terms and the most diverse range, including elements that are not captured in other conditions. However, important themes generated in other conditions are not produced because the cues to create them are missing. The study also generated a number of unexpected findings, including responses describing information that is not in the original material: personal opinions and experiences, and comments about the information text itself. These unexpected responses have both positive and negative consequences for the generation of metadata and the curation of scientific records. The results of studies using these techniques to capture metadata for chemistry experiments are also discussed
The 2014 DAF Survey at the University of Sheffield
Get PDFThe Data Asset Framework methodology has evolved to provide a model for institutional surveys of researchers’ data practices and attitudes. At least 13 such studies have been published in the UK and internationally. The aim of this paper is to analyse the results from the 2014 DAF survey at the University of Sheffield and to reflect on the comparability of this with previous published studies. 432 researchers responded to the survey representing 8% of the target population. Researchers at Sheffield collect multiple types of data and a significant number have accumulated very large amounts of data. Data was backed up on a diverse basis. Only 25% of respondents had a DMP. Eighteen months after its creation most respondents were still not aware of the local research data management policy. Fortunately, most respondents were favourable to the idea of training in many aspects of RDM. Researchers had generally had no experience of sharing data, but attitudes were positive, both in terms of a significant minority seeing a lack of data sharing as an obstacle to the progress of research and also desire to reuse the data of others and share their own with a broad group of researchers. Comparison of the Sheffield results with those of other institutions is difficult particularly because of the divergence of questions asked in the different studies. Nevertheless, in terms of data practices and identifying training priorities there are common patterns. This institutional survey showed less positive attitudes to data sharing than the results of cross-institutional studies, such as conducted by Tenopir et al. (2011)
Enriching Education with Exemplars in Practice: Iterative Development of Data Curation Internships
Get PDFPartnerships between educational programs and research centers are vital to meeting the escalating workforce demands in data curation. They offer a platform for educators to increase their knowledge of current best practices and emerging challenges in the field. Student internships can be key to the success of these partnerships, not just for the students who gain authentic experience in facilities that excel at data intensive research and data services. Such partnerships provide an effective platform for rich and mutually beneficial engagement among educators, data professionals, scientists, and students. This paper reports on results from the Data Curation Education in Research Centers (DCERC) program aimed at developing a model for data curation education featuring field experiences in exemplar research centers. A strength of the DCERC model is its emphasis on facilitating mutual exchange of information among the DCERC program mentors and students. This model has evolved as a result of iterative and gradual refinements to the program model based upon information gathered from the formative evaluation. These refinements not only resulted in improved outcomes for the program participants but also, we believe, a more sustainable model for the program that leverages the knowledge base of the research scientists and students through peer-to-peer learning, rather than a traditional expert to trainee model. This paper describes formative evaluation findings that shaped the development of the DCERC program. We conclude with a discussion of the critical features of this model for the development of similar programs, and a data curation workforce that is able to accommodate and adapt to emergent data needs in a variety of environments
Collection, Curation, Citation at Source: Publication@Source 10 Years On
Get PDFThe Southampton chemical information group had its genesis in 2001, when we began an e-Science pilot project to investigate structure-property mapping, combinatorial chemistry, and the Grid. CombeChem instigated a range of activities that have since been underway for more than ten years, in many ways matching the expansion of interest in using the Web as a vehicle for collection, curation, dissemination, reuse, and exploitation of scientific data and information. Chemistry has frequently provided the exemplar case studies, notably for the series of projects – funded by Jisc and EPSRC – that investigated the issues associated with the long-term preservation of data to support the scholarly knowledge cycle, such as the eBank UK project. Rapid developments in Internet access and mobile technology have significantly influenced the way researchers view connectivity, data standards, and the increasing importance and power of semantics and the Semantic Web. These technical advances interact strongly with the social dimension and have led to a reconsideration of the responsibilities of researchers for the quality of their research and for satisfying the requirements of modern stakeholders. Such obligations have given rise to discussions about Open Access and Open Data, creating a range of alternatives that are now technically feasible but need to be socially acceptable. Business plans are changing too, but in a strange contradiction, desire can run ahead of what is possible, sensible, and affordable, while lagging behind in imagination of what would be technically possible and potentially game-changing! Taking the chemical sciences as our example and focusing on the curation of research data, we explore from our perspective, ten years back and ten years forward, how far we have been able to re-imagine the data/information value pathway from bench to publication. We assess not only the major advances and changes that have been achieved, but also where we have been less successful than we might have hoped. We explore the directions for the future, based on what is clearly already possible and on what we can envisage becoming feasible in the near future
Intellectual Capital at Risk: Data Management Practices and Data Loss by Faculty Members at Five American Universities
Get PDFA study of 56 professors at five American universities found that a majority had little understanding of principles, well-known in the field of data curation, informing the ongoing administration of digital materials and chose to manage and store work-related data by relying on the use of their own storage devices and cloud accounts. It also found that a majority of them had experienced the loss of at least one work-related digital object that they considered to be important in the course of their professional career. Despite such a rate of loss, a majority of respondents expressed at least a moderate level of confidence that they would be able to make use of their digital objects in 25 years. The data suggest that many faculty members are unaware that their data is at risk. They also indicate a strong correlation between faculty members’ digital object loss and their data management practices. University professors producing digital objects can help themselves by becoming aware that these materials are subject to loss. They can also benefit from awareness and use of better personal data management practices, as well as participation in university-level programmatic digital curation efforts and the availability of more readily accessible, robust infrastructure for the storage of digital materials
A System for Distributed Minting and Management of Persistent Identifiers
Get PDFMinting persistent identifiers and managing their metadata is typically governed by a single organization. Such a single point of failure poses a risk to longevity and long-term preservation of identifiers. In this paper we address the risk by proposing a radically different approach, in which minting and management of persistent identifiers is distributed, and the integrity of the distributed system is guaranteed by public-key cryptography. We describe the general architecture of the system, analyse its robustness and discuss potential deployment scenarios