scholarly journals Some Challenges for eScience Liaison

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-110
Author(s):  
Graham Pryor
Keyword(s):  
Good Practice ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Data Curation ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Digital Curation ◽  
Founding Principle ◽  
Research Resources ◽  
Digital Research

The Digital Curation Centre’s promotion of expertise and good practice in digital data curation is no mere exercise in theory. Through its new eScience Liaison initiative the DCC has kept a close eye on its founding principle, that the necessity for the physical and life sciences to share access to digital research resources is due mainly to issues characteristic of eScience. This article describes some of the principal liaison activities that have been addressed within that community since the summer of 2007.

scholarly journals Archiving South African digital research data: How ready are we?

2016 ◽  
Vol Volume 112 (Number 7/8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret M. Koopman ◽  
Karin de Jager ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Data Management ◽  
South African ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Data Archiving ◽  
Research Data Management ◽  
The University ◽  
Digital Research

Abstract Digital data archiving and research data management have become increasingly important for institutions in South Africa, particularly after the announcement by the National Research Foundation, one of the principal South African academic research funders, recommending these actions for the research that they fund. A case study undertaken during the latter half of 2014, among the biological sciences researchers at a South African university, explored the state of data management and archiving at this institution and the readiness of researchers to engage with sharing their digital research data through repositories. It was found that while some researchers were already engaged with digital data archiving in repositories, neither researchers nor the university had implemented systematic research data management.

scholarly journals Updating the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Sayeed Choudhury ◽  
Caihong Huang ◽  
Carole L. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Data Curation ◽  
Site Visit ◽  
Data Services ◽  
Digital Curation ◽  
Lifecycle Model ◽  
Integrated Research ◽  
Data Production ◽  
A Site

The DCC Curation Lifecycle Model has played a vital role in the field of data curation for over a decade. During that time, the scale and complexity of data have changed dramatically, along with the contexts of data production and use. This paper reports on a study examining factors impacting data curation practices and presents recommendations for updating the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model. The study was grounded in a review of other lifecycle models and informed by a site visit to the Digital Curation Centre and consultation with expert practitioners and researchers. Framed by contemporary conditions impacting the conduct of research and provision of data services, the analysis and proposed recommendations account for the prominence of machine-actionable data, the importance of machine learning for data processing and analytics, growth of integrated research workflows, and escalating concerns with fairness, accountability, and transparency of data and algorithms.

scholarly journals The Rise of “Digital Biology”: We need not only open, FAIR but also sustainable data!

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Grandcolas
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Dna Sequences ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Biological Knowledge ◽  
Selected Lines ◽  
Taxonomic Descriptions ◽  
Global Coherence ◽  
Occurrence Records

Biology has already experienced great divides that decreased its global coherence and its ability to answer important scientific and societal concerns. For example in the XXth century, the so-called “Life Sciences” developed remarkably in comparison to Natural History sciences. This way, the approaches on model organisms dominated or prevented other approaches from being carried out on more diverse organisms, which may have given a misleading feeling of generality for the results obtained. Another great divide is at risk of developing now with the rise of what could be called “Digital Biology,” separating from other “material-based” approaches in its tendency to consider digital data only. Some biologists adopt a somewhat essentialist view of species and DNA, considering that enough knowledge is now accumulated, and that species records can be kept and saved as digital data only (Grandcolas 2017). Examples of this include occurrence records without specimens or auxiliary documents, taxonomic descriptions based on photographs, DNA sequences without vouchers, and, lastly, DNA sequences without taxonomic names. This tendency puts at risk the sustainability, growth, and coherence of biological knowledge that is organized in a system wherein all data and notions are connected via specimens, with names and sequences being a retrieval means (Troudet et al. 2018). This tendency also ignores the robust foundation of biology, the data of which are linked to collections, vouchers, and stocks. The foundation of physical specimens exists for data concerning any live beings, be they rare wild species or selected lines of model organisms. There are now many calls for open and FAIR science, with results, methods, tools, and data not only findable, accessible, and interoperable but also re-usable. More than FAIR and digitally re-usable, data need to be sustainable. It is needed that their meaning and significance can be re-analysed, re-interpreted by going back as far as possible to material vouchers. We urge then scientists to consider this question by providing all necessary material elements to make open and FAIR data sustainable as well.

scholarly journals Digitale Kuratierungstechnologien für Bibliotheken

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-116
Author(s):  
Clemens Neudecker ◽  
Georg Rehm
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Digital Content ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Collaborative Project ◽  
Digital Curation ◽  
State Library ◽  
Smart Technologies

In diesem Artikel werden digitale Kuratierungstechnologien vorgestellt, wie sie aktuell im Rahmen eines vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) geförderten Verbundprojekts unter der Leitung des DFKI für die Anwendung in verschiedenen Branchen und Domänen entwickelt werden. Der besondere Augenmerk liegt dabei auf deren Anwendungsszenarien in Bibliotheken – nach einer Einführung in die Herausforderungen, die sich durch die Massendigitalisierung in Bibliotheken stellen, werden exemplarisch Einsatzmöglichkeiten von Kuratierungstechnologien im Kontext von Bibliotheken vorgestellt. Anhand von Beispielen aus der bibliothekarischen Arbeit im 21. Jahrhundert, sowie der Nachnutzung digitaler Bibliotheksdaten in Wissenschaft und Kreativwirtschaft, werden die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten und Potenziale der Nutzung von Kuratierungstechnologien zur Datenaufbereitung, -anreicherung und Bereitstellung von attraktiven Diensten in Bibliotheken sowie für die Entwicklung neuartiger Forschungs- und Geschäftsfelder in deren Umfeld aufgezeigt.This article presents smart technologies for digital content curation that are currently under development in a collaborative project, coordinated by DFKI and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. After a brief introduction into the concept of digital curation, the article goes on to explain the various technologies and their use cases across a number of sectors. In the following, we go into greater detail regarding the particular needs and requirements for digital curation technologies in the domain of libraries. Due to their large-scale digitisation activities, libraries are creating vast amounts of digital data. Technologies for digital curation can help leverage the full potential of these data for applications in scholarship, digital humanities, and the creative industries and produce new opportunities for research and industry, as illustrated by a number of examples from the Berlin State Library.

scholarly journals Scaling by Optimising: Modularisation of Data Curation Services in Growing Organisations

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Hagen Peukert
Keyword(s):  
Data Management ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Management Science ◽  
Data Curation ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Digital Management ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
The Cost

After a century of theorising and applying management practices, we are in the middle of entering a new stage in management science: digital management. The management of digital data submerges in traditional functions of management and, at the same time, continues to recreate viable solutions and conceptualisations in its established fields, e.g. research data management. Yet, one can observe bilateral synergies and mutual enrichment of traditional and data management practices in all fields. The paper at hand addresses a case in point, in which new and old management practices amalgamate to meet a steadily, in part characterised by leaps and bounds, increasing demand of data curation services in academic institutions. The idea of modularisation, as known from software engineering, is applied to data curation workflows so that economies of scale and scope can be used. While scaling refers to both management science and data science, optimising is understood in the traditional managerial sense, that is, with respect to the cost function. By means of a situation analysis describing how data curation services were applied from one department to the entire institution and an analysis of the factors of influence, a method of modularisation is outlined that converges to an optimal state of curation workflows.

scholarly journals Data Curation: How and Why. A Showcase with Re-use Scenarios.

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-193
Author(s):  
Philipp Gerth ◽  
Anne Sieverling ◽  
Martina Trognitz
Keyword(s):  
Research Data ◽  
Data Curation ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
German Research Foundation ◽  
Semantic Web Technologies ◽  
Web Technologies ◽  
Heterogeneous Datasets ◽  
German Research ◽  
Data Portal ◽  
Conceptual Work

IANUS is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with the objective to build up a digital archive for archaeology and ancient studies in Germany. A first three year phase of conceptual work is now being followed by a second, in which the concepts get implemented and the data centre begins its operational work.Data curation is essential for preservation of digital data and helps to detect errors, aggregate documentation, ensure the reusability of data and in some cases even add further functionality and additional files. This paper will present the workflow of data curation based on a data collection about European vertebrate fauna and will exemplify the different data processing stages at IANUS according to the OAIS model – from its initial submission until its final presentation on the recently established data portal. One aspect of this will be the discussion of the archival information package. To enable and ease the reusability of research data, it is useful to enrich the data. This includes the GIS integration of geographic informations and reutilisation of bibliography. Finally a re-use scenario of research data stored in the IANUS repository will be presented that offers researchers a unified search and discovery facilities over several distributed and heterogeneous datasets by using Semantic Web technologies.   

scholarly journals Extending the Research Data Toolkit: Data Curation Primers

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Cynthia Hudson-Vitale ◽  
Hannah Hadley ◽  
Jennifer Moore ◽  
Lisa Johnston ◽  
Wendy Kozlowski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heterogeneous Data ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Data Curation ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Know How ◽  
Digital Curation ◽  
Data Formats ◽  
Or Organization ◽  
Disciplinary Area

Niche and proprietary data formats used in cutting-edge research and technology have specific curation considerations and challenges. The increased demand for subject liaisons, library archivists, and digital curators to curate this variety of data types created locally at an institution or organization poses difficulties. Subject liaisons possess discipline knowledge and expertise for a given domain or discipline and digital curation experts know how to properly steward data assets generally. Yet, a gap often exists between the expertise available within the organization and local curation needs. While many institutions and organizations have expertise in certain domains and areas, oftentimes the heterogeneous data types received for deposit extend beyond this expertise. Additionally, evolving research methods and new, cutting-edge technology used in research often result in unfamiliar and niche data formats received for deposit. Knowing how to ‘get-started’ in curating these file types and formats can be a particular challenge. To address this need, the data curation community have been developing a new set of tools - data curation primers. These primers are evolving documents that detail a specific subject, disciplinary area or curation task, and that can be used as a reference or jump-start to curating research data. This paper will provide background on the data curation primers and their content detail the process of their development, highlight the data curation primers published to date, emphasize how curators can incorporate these resources into workflows, and show curators how they can get involved and share their own expertise.

Being Stuck in (Live) Time: The Sticky Sociological Imagination

2012 ◽  
Vol 60 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 124-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Uprichard
Keyword(s):  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Social Data ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Transactional Data ◽  
Digital Research

Recently, Savage and Burrows (2007) have argued that one way to invigorate sociology's ‘empirical crisis’ is to take advantage of live, web-based digital transactional data. This paper argues that whilst sociologists do indeed need to engage with this growing digital data deluge, there are longer-term risks involved that need to be considered. More precisely, C. Wright Mills' ‘sociological imagination’ is used as the basis for the kind of sociological research that one might aim for, even within the digital era. In so doing, it is suggested that current forms of engaging with transactional social data are problematic to the sociological imagination because they tend to be ahistorical and focus mainly on ‘now casting’. The ahistorical nature of this genre of digital research, it is argued, necessarily restricts the possibility of developing a serious sociological imagination. In turn, it is concluded, there is a need to think beyond the digitized surfaces of the plastic present and to consider the impact that time and temporality, particularly within the digital arena, have on shaping our sociological imagination.

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