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

Abstract

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.

“How Do I Do That?” A Literature Review of Research Data Management Skill Gaps of Canadian Health Sciences Information Professionals

“…Yakel divides data management into five areas: "lifecycle management of materials; active long-term involvement by data creators and managers; appraisal and selection of materials; provision of access; and preservation" [14]. Lee and Stvilia list many lifecycle models of research data but use the Digital Curation Centre's (DCC) Curation Lifecycle Model in their study of the roles of institutional repository staff [15]. The DCC model lists the sequential activities in curating and preserving data: conceptualize, create or receive, appraise and select, ingest, preserve, store, and access, use and reuse [16].…”

“…Harkening back to Palmer (1996), Pryor and Donnelly describe data practitioners as "hybrid information specialists with boundary-spanning roles" [18]. Lee and Stvilia [15] list specific activities for data curators and metadata specialists: building "data governance structure," helping "data providers to create appropriate metadata for their dataset," maintaining software, and metadata creation. Lyon sees information professionals offering RDM planning, training, citing, licensing, and storage [19].…”

“…Delserone includes quotations from researchers at the University of Minnesota: "[d]ata storage is fundamental to all of us" and "[t]he Libraries could facilitate the curation and preservation of data by scholars, and teach researchers how to better organize it." Lee and Stvilia list additional skills, including "metadata knowledge particular for research data" and "technical details of repository software, server, and its architecture" [15]. Nicholson and Bennett claim "sound and consistent methodologies" are needed to ensure data is available to access [40].…”

Researchers' uses of and disincentives for sharing their research identity information in research information management systems

“…RIMSs may not have sufficient resources to control the quality of large‐scale uncontrolled metadata, often batch collected and ingested from faculty‐authored websites and journal databases. Researchers need to share their research identity information through public profiles in RIMSs and participate in the curation of that information to ensure its quality and reliability (Heidorn, ; Lee & Stvilia, ; Salo, ; Tenopir, Birch, & Allard, ).…”

Conceptualizing Data Curation Activities Within Two Academic Libraries

“…The SPEC Kit concludes that they found a "wide variability in data curation services" and suggests that "as libraries grow and strengthen their positions as centers of data curation, recursive efforts to convey their activities meaningfully and consistently, both internally and externally, will be of benefit" (p. 13). How libraries engage in data curation activities has also been examined through case studies and interviews with staff working within institutional repositories (Johnston, 2017;Lee & Stvilia, 2017 ). Further research will provide a growing foundation for libraries to engage in dialogues around data curation service models.…”