Data CurationEric AltmyerPreston Medical Library

What is Data Curation?

“Digital curation involves maintaining, preserving and adding value to digital research data throughout its lifecycle” - The Digital Curation Centre

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

Data Life Cycle

DataONE Life Cycle (dataone.org)

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.

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.

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

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

Metadata

•Data about data▫Date▫Location▫Disease

•Universal Medical Language System•NIH Common Data Elements

Data Sharing

•Repositories▫Institutional▫Discipline Specific

databib.org re3data.org

•Data Journals•Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)

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=325362&sid=3660173)

Question?