On data and publications: who does what

Kevin Ashley
Digital Curation Centre

Play (25min)

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Research data has become, or will become, a primary concern of libraries in research organisations for a number of reasons. Traditional publications increasingly require links to data and other material which supports the publication. Datasets want to be able to cite the publications which used them. Data itself is treated as a primary research output, citable in itself. Research funders increasingly require data to be retained and reusable long after project funding ends. For all of these purposes data needs to be taken care of in an environment which can guarantee access and some degree of permanence. Data centres carry out that role in some disciplines – libraries are the only candidates for many others. Kevin Ashley will talk about roles and responsibilities that emerge and how libraries can share the costs and benefits of doing this job well.

KEVIN ASHLEY is Director of the UK’s Digital Curation Centre (http://www.dcc.ac.uk/), established by JISC in 2004 to provide support to research institutions on digital preservation with a special focus on research data management (RDM). The DCC’s services include online data management planning tools (DMP Online), training, and events such as the Research Data Management Forum. They also work closely with a small number of universities to develop institutional RDM capability. Kevin was formerly Head of Digital Archives Department at ULCC. He ran a range of digital preservation services from 1994 onwards for external organisations including UK government and national libraries, as well as learned societies and other universities. Services included NDAD (the National Digital Archive of Datasets), the digital preservation training programme (DPTP) and AIM25.