RDM Group Input to NSF DataWay Project 8/28/12

From SURA Research Data Management
Jump to: navigation, search


RDM Group Input on DataWay Process to Judy Verbeke – September 28, 2012

Background:

The Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) and the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) have been working to bring together CIOs and Library professionals to explore collaborations for improving our member institutions ability to manage the rapidly growing volume of research data. Through a series of face-to-face meetings and bi-weekly conference calls over the past six months we have worked to identify existing and developing tools and initiatives targeted at managing research data, sharing experiences and identifying gaps along the way. As part of our last meeting on August 23 we discussed the potential of the DataWay program and offer the following thoughts.


Our Understanding of DataWay Vision:

Create a framework that supports the data lifecycle for varied disciplines that is sustainable, promotes the integrated use of different data sources, relies on reuse and sharing of tools, policies and processes across disciplines and organizations.


Possible Goals for Dataway:

  • Create a Governance structure or template for managing the data lifecycle of varied disciplines
  • Build communities of data sponsorship that promote the development of standards and the sharing of data and best practices
  • Create or promote the development of policies, structures and tools to support access to research data while protecting intellectual property rights
  • Create models and incentives for institutional adoption of data lifecycle management


Possible Topics for pre-Charrette White papers:

  • Access and discoverability of distributed data sources including rights management
  • Methods for inclusion and validation of data provenance and data quality
  • Development of incentives/drivers for use and adoption of lifecycle management including use of standards, access and preservation
  • Governance and economic models for sustainable curation including distribution of effort between local through global communities
  • Communities, methods and processes for the definition of metadata and ontologies (vocabulary)
  • Methods and tools for the mapping between ontologies across fields & disciplines
  • Mechanisms for evaluating the DataWay process & progress
  • Survey of organizational and business process models that institutions, collaborations and federations are currently using
  • Case studies involving public/private partnerships to improve the management of research data
  • Models for building multi-institutional, cross disciplinary collaborations to improve the management of research data
  • Identification of logical / potential division between institution / regional / national responsibilities for various DataWay (data life cycle) components