Digging into Data is a useful online resource listing repositories.

It includes:

• Digital libraries
• Data archives
• Data repositories

For each repository, you'll find a description of their contents, contact information, and other details.

A SURF project has helped create a digital home for dying languages. The University of Leiden Library in Holland, in collaboration with the CARDS (Controlled Access to Research Data Stored Securely) project of SURF in the Netherlands, is working on a project with Roberta D'Alessandro, Professor of Italian at Leiden University, to develop a data management system to manage and share important research data on dying Italian dialects. For Roberta and her team being able to upload and share the data they have collected is a central feature of the system, simplifying collaboration and allowing other language researchers to use the material. To read the full report go to Research Information: August/September 2012

Dryad is an international data repository in the basic and applied biosciences. The goal of the repository is to preserve all the underlying data reported in a paper at the time of publications. Recognising the emerging trend of data citation, this is an excellent example of a repository supporting the management of data and sharing. See the November 2011 blog on Dryad for further information.

The latest Australian National Data Service (ANDS) newsletter is now available. This issue examines research data from the perspective of researchers.

Including:

• International partnerships.
• Enabling new and efficient research.
• Big data.
• International engagement.
• Up and coming events.

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is a United Kingdom national facility designed to hold, manage and distribute data concerning the marine environment. Data holdings include biological, chemical, physical and geophysical data, containing measurements of nearly 22,000 different variables.

BODC describes their approach to marine data management as:

• Careful storage, quality control and archiving of data - so that data are unaffected by changes in technology and will be available into the future.
• Distributing data to scientists, education, industry and the public - with a goal to enable online access to all data via the web site.
• Working alongside scientists during marine research projects - to provide a data management service during the life time of the project.

BODC holds a wealth of publicly accessible marine data under the provision of licence agreements. Read more about:

• Submitting, requesting and retrieving data.
• Data management services
• UK, European and International projects at BODC.
• The Published Data Library (PDL), which is an operational prototype that provides snapshots of specially chosen data sets, archived using rigorous version management. This enables citation of the data set in journal papers through the assignment of a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) in collaboration with the British Library.

BODC is run by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and hosted by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC).

Christine Borgman, of the UCLA Department of Information Studies, has written an interesting in-depth discussion paper on "the conundrum of sharing research data":

Researchers are producing an unprecedented deluge of data by using new methods and instrumentation. Others may wish to mine these data for new discoveries and innovations. However, research data are not readily available as sharing is common in only a few fields such as astronomy and genomics. Data sharing practices in other fields vary widely. Moreover, research data take many forms, are handled in many ways, using many approaches, and often are difficult to interpret once removed from their initial context. Data sharing is thus a conundrum. Four rationales for sharing data are examined, drawing examples from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities: (1) to reproduce or to verify research, (2) to make results of publicly funded research available to the public, (3) to enable others to ask new questions of extant data, and (4) to advance the state of research and innovation. These rationales differ by the arguments for sharing, by beneficiaries, and by the motivations and incentives of the many stakeholders involved. The challenges are to understand which data might be shared, by whom, with whom, under what conditions, why, and to what effects. Answers will inform data policy and practice.

Borgman, C. L. (2012), The conundrum of sharing research data. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 63: 1059-1078. doi: 10.1002/asi.22634

View Full Article in HTML or Download the PDF