Symposium on Global Scientific Data Infrastructures

Panel Two: Stakeholder Communities in the DWFAnn Wolpert, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Board on Research Data and Information

Policy and Global Affairs Division, National Academy of Sciences

National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DCWednesday, August 29, 2012

Three stakeholder perspectives

• University administrator– Economics of Research I institutions– Incentives

• University librarian– Information Science research program– Digital preservation – Getting to scale

• Institutional repository operator– Many media– Data management plans

Six broad priority changes1. Data no longer a private preserve2. Give credit for data communication

and collaboration3. Develop common standards for

communicating data4. Mandate “intelligent openness” for

data relevant of published papers5. Strengthen the cohort of data

scientists6. Develop new software tools to

automate and simplify the creation and exploitation of data sets

Recommendation 2

Universities and research institutes should play a major role in supporting an open data culture

1. Value data communication as an academic criterion

2. Develop a data strategy and local capacity to curate own knowledge resources and support data needs

3. Stipulate open data as a default

Digital Preservation Perspective

• Existing international community of digital preservation practice

• History of & structures for collaboration; regionally, nationally, internationally

• Mission-based with a shared purpose• Funded to support research & scholarship, and to

preserve the cultural & intellectual record• Interconnected projects; getting to scale • Constrained by intellectual property & funding

Celebrate progress, consolidate lessons learned, plan for the future

Six lenses/aspects of alignment:1. Legal2. Organizational3. Standards4. Technical5. Economic6. Education

Two keys to successful collaboration:7. Plan broad goals for collaboration8. Build on existing relationships

Some elements of the existing digital preservation ecosystem

• National Libraries collaborations• National Digital Stewardship Alliance• DuraSpace• HathiTrust• Center for Research Libraries• OCLC• International Internet Preservation Consortium• Digital Preservation Network (DPN)• Digital Public Library of America/Europeana• Linked Data• Authority files (VIAF, ORCID, etc)

Institutional Repository Perspective Things to think about

• Security and integrity• Privacy• Life cycle management• What’s “interoperability”• Who pays• Who benefits

Consider incentives that reinforce DWF mission and vision

• Funding agencies/foundations• Primary researchers• Research institutions• Scholarly journal publishers• Data publishers• “Reusers”

How could DWF benefit research organizations?

• Reduce costs of data management and access by establishing core practices for government data producers:– Minimum and recommended practice for machine-

actionable metadata, provenance, and versioning– Minimum and recommended practice for

open formats, open data licenses, data access API’s– Model contracts language for subcontractors who

collect and deliver data to government

How could DWF benefit research organizations?

• Reduce costs of compliance for confidential data use:– Model data usage agreements that enable data

interoperability in a protected environment– Establish a data privacy expert board (e.g. under

NIST) to identify safe-harbor methodologies for sharing confidential information

How could DWF benefit research organizations?

• Identify core practices for data management planning and evaluation for sponsored research:– Identify model data management plan elements and

criteria for government sponsored research – Identify minimal and recommended data citation

requirements and standard– Identify minimal and recommended practices for

tracking compliance with data management plans and citation requirements