2. What is Data Curation?
“Digital curation
involves maintaining,
preserving and adding
value to digital research
data throughout its
lifecycle” - The Digital
Curation Centre
3. What is Scientific Data?
Recorded factual material accepted in the
scientific community as necessary for validating
research findings.
• Types of Data
▫ Observational
▫ Experimental
▫ Simulation
▫ Derived or Compiled
5. Grant Funding Organizations
• National Science Foundation
▫ Requires a two page data management plan with
all grant applications.
• National Institute of Health
▫ Requires data sharing be addressed in
applications with direct costs of $500,000 or
more.
6. Why Manage Data?
• Transparency
• Compliance with grant giving organization’s
standards
• Allows for data to be analyzed and published, be
used by others, and for you to get credit for your
work if it is used by someone else.
7. Files
• File Naming Conventions
• File Types
• Open or Non-Proprietary file types are preferred
over proprietary
▫ Text: PDF/A, TXT Vs. DOC
▫ Images: TIFF, PNG Vs. JPG
▫ Audio: WAV Vs. MP3
▫ Numbers/Statistics: ASCII, SAS Vs. XLS
▫ Video: MPEG, MOV Vs. Quicktime
8. Storage Media
• Lifespan of at least 10 years.
• Avoid mediums that are susceptible to
environmental hazards.
• Avoid Mediums that can be easily lost or
destroyed.
• The Cloud
9. Metadata
• Data about data
▫ Date
▫ Location
▫ Disease
• Universal Medical Language System
• NIH Common Data Elements
10. Data Sharing
• Repositories
▫ Institutional
▫ Discipline Specific
databib.org
re3data.org
• Data Journals
• Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
11. Resources
• DMPTool (https://dmp.cdlib.org/)
▫ Walks researchers through the creation of a DMP
specifically for a number of different organizations
including the NSF.
• DataONE
▫ Data Management Best Practices
• UT’s Data Management Libguide
(http://libguides.utk.edu/content.php?pid=325
362&sid=3660173)
