A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

UKOLN is supported by:

UK Perspectives on the Curation and Preservation of Scientific Data

Dr Liz Lyon, Director, UKOLN, University of Bath, UK

Associate Director, UK Digital Curation Centre

AAAS Annual Meeting Boston, February 2008.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons LicenceAttribution-ShareAlike 2.0

Overview1. Context: “big science, small

science & open science”

2. Strategy, Policy, Planning: Dealing with Data Report

3. Practice & Futures

Big versus Small Science

“Data from Big Science is … easier to handle, understand and archive. Small Science is horribly heterogeneous and far more vast. In time Small Science will generate 2-3 times more data than Big Science.”

“Lost in some research assistant’s computer, the data are often irretrievable or an undecipherable string of digits”

“To vet experiments, correct errors, or find new breakthroughs, scientists desperately need better ways to store and retrieve research data”

‘Lost in a Sea of Science Data’ S.Carlson, The Chronicle of Higher Education (23/06/2006)

Open Science

Millennials as native data scientists

Social networks for scientists

Second Life: virtual worlds

Community repositories for data

Tagging and sharing workflows

Open Notebook Science (ONS)

Data Curation and Preservation choices?

1. Disciplinary data centre2. Institutional / departmental / lab repository 3. Repository federation or network4. National library or national archive5. “Public” data repository or service6. Web archiving services7. Commercial data store - Amazon S3 8. Ecosystem of hosted lifebits services (Jon Udell) 9. None of these?10. All of these?

UKOLN Liz Lyon June 2007 35 Recommendations for JISC

Roles, Rights, Responsibilities,

Relationships: scientist, institution, data centre, user, funder, publisher

Research Information Network RIN January 2008

5 Principles: Roles & responsibilities, standards & QA, access, usage & credit,

benefits & cost-effectiveness, preservation & sustainability

Strategic approaches & policy

Report Recommendations 1

• DataSets Mapping and Gap Analysis (UK)

• Data Curation & Preservation Strategy (UK)

• Data Audit Framework (HE Institutions)

• Institutional Data Management, Preservation & Sharing Policy

• Data Management & Sharing Policy (Funders)

• Data Management Plan (Projects)

• Data Networking Forum (People)

Recommendations 2 Digital Curation Centre

• Co-ordinated advocacy programmes

• Co-ordinated training programmes

• Disciplinary Data Case Studies (SCARP)

• scientist

• institution

• data centre

• user

• funder

• publisher

Roles, Rights Responsibilities

Relationships:

Digital Curation Centre http://www.dcc.ac.uk/

• Policy & Advocacy: briefing papers, curation manual

• Audit & Certification: DRAMBORA • Community Development: Research Data Forum

with RIN• Training and skills: workshops, summer school• Research: database archiving• Dissemination: International Conference, e-journal

IJDC

Access and Use

Transform

Ingest

Appraise and

Select

Preservation Action

Access and

Reuse

Store

Create

Conceptualise

Destroy

Digital Objects, Data or

Databases

Description

Representation Information

Curate

Preserve

and

and

Pre

serv

atio

n Plan

nin

g

and

Reappraise

Draft DCC Curation Lifecycle Model

Institutional case study: eCrystals data repository

• Metadata schema Application Profile, DOIs, InChIs, Rights & Citation Policy

• Embedded in workflow

http://ecrystals.chem.soton.ac.uk

Started as JISC-funded eBank-UK Project Sept 2003

ePrints.org @ Southampton + aggregator service @ UKOLN

CreateDeposit

Link

Curate Preserve Standards

Scientist

Funder

Collaborate Share

User

Discover Re-use

eCrystals Federation Data Deposit Model (based on model in Dealing with Data Report UKOLN 2007)

Link

Link

Scientist

Policy AdvocacyTraining

HarvestIR Federation

Publishers

Data centres / aggregator

servicesAdvisory

eCrystals Curation & Preservation Study Examined four main areas

1. Audit and certification (TRAC, DRAMBORA, NESTOR, ISO International repository audit and certification BOF Group)

2. The Open Archival Information System (OAIS) and Representation Information (RI)

3. eBank-UK application profile and preservation metadata

4. ePrints.org repository platform

Recommendations

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/ebank-uk/curation/eBank3-WP4-Report%20(Revised).pdf

eCrystals Federation: Preservation & sustainability Recommendations

Data repositories• Use DRAMBORA Interactive for self-assessment• Add PREMIS preservation metadata• Collect eCrystals representation information• Examine repository platform conformance to OAIS Reference Model• Survey partner preservation policies

Dealing with Data Report Future challenges?

• Instrumentation and laboratory equipment

• Dataset re-use: significant properties

• Versions, identifiers, citation

• Robust bi-directional linking

• IPR and model licences for data

• Cost-benefits of data curation

• Careers, specialist skills and capacity

• Data curation within the curriculum

Future UK developments• JISC initiatives

– Data Audit Framework Study– Research Data Preservation Costs Study– Institutional Preservation Policy Study– Preservation of Web Resources Workshops– Data curators: professional development and careers Study

• Shared Research Data Service Feasibility Study: report January 2009• Research Information Network (RIN) Publication of Data Outputs study

pending• Open Repositories Conference April 2008 University of Southampton

• 4th International Digital Curation Conference, December 2008, Edinburgh

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

Slides will be available at :

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/e.j.lyon/presentations.html