Press Release: JISC helps researchers to meet the research data challenge
JISC marked the launch of its research data management programme at the UK e-Science All Hands meeting this week. The programme helps researchers, institutions, funders and policy makers meet the challenge of keeping research data for re-use in the future. A new briefing paper is also published.
Researchers in almost all disciplines now create ‘data’ in digital form. Some data are well-managed and kept so that they can be re-used in future. But the majority go un-catalogued, are stored in an ad hoc fashion and are thus lost to posterity, resulting in a failure to reap the full potential of investment from present day research.
JISC’s Managing Research Data programme is addressing the research data challenge from new perspectives, plugging notable gaps in current knowledge and making links between the needs of researchers, institutions and policy makers.
The programme, which ends in 2011, will provide researchers and institutions with case studies of good research data management, better tools for managing research data and training materials. Improved tools for citing, integrating and linking data, including to publications, will also be developed. Policy makers will gain a clearer understanding of researchers’ and institutions’ requirements, a better view of the value of different types of data and a roadmap outlining the steps needed to achieve a coherent UK policy for research data.
‘Research and scientific innovation depend on finding, integrating and re-using the products of previous research,’ argues Dr Simon Hodson, JISC e-research programme manager. ‘As research becomes increasingly reliant upon information and data held in a digital form the question of how these resources are maintained becomes of vital importance.
‘The Managing Research Data programme is addressing the sector’s need for both the infrastructure required to manage research data effectively and the skills and knowledge-base needed to make the most out of the research data asset,’ he concluded.
Dr William Kilbride, director of the Digital Preservation Coalition, introduced the programme during the poster session at All Hands, encouraging participants, all of whom create research data, to think about how they can ensure that their work has a lasting impact.
JISC is a major sponsor at All Hands this year. See more details of the meeting: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/12/allhands09
Find out more about ‘Meeting the Research Data Challenge’ in the briefing paper: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/bpresearchdatachallenge
Read about the Managing Research Data programme, #jiscmrd: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/mrd
Explore JISC’s research 3.0 activity: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/campaigns/res3