The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) Data Repository contains research datasets sourced from NCEAS funded activities. NCEAS, a cross-disciplinary and collaborative institute, has made the repository publicly available through the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB) - a network designed to facilitate ecological and environmental research.

The NCEAS Data Repository is available to search, and browse, and allows data to be viewed through an interactive map.

Researchers can also register a new dataset, which makes use of Ecological Metadata Language, and Morpho data management software and tools.

The repository is straightforward to use, and contains a wealth of ecological research data and information.

Thomson Reuters has announced the release of the Data Citation Index. The index will be hosted on the Web of Knowledge platform, and will become available in late 2012.

The Data Citation Index will incorporate content from datasets deposited in repositories around the world, and will cover the social sciences, physical sciences, life sciences, arts and humanities. The Index will capture bibliographic records and cited references, which will facilitate the measurement of impact in digital research.

In addition, Thomson Reuters believe the Index will provide 'a more comprehensive view of scholarly output' and 'speed up the research process'.

The news announcement includes a selection essay, which outlines their selection process for repositories, as well as metadata and standards.

JISC News reports that the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has "issued the first public appraisal of the Digging into Data Challenge, an international grant programme first funded by JISC, the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the US National Science Foundation and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Their findings are presented in One Culture, along with a series of recommendations for researchers, administrators, scholarly societies, academic publishers, research libraries, and funding agencies. The recommendations are "urgent, pointed, and even disruptive," write the authors. "To address them, we must recognize the impediments of tradition that hinder the contemporary university's ability to adapt to, support, or sustain this emerging research over time."

The Digging into Data Challenge was launched in 2009 to better understand how "big data" changes the research landscape for the humanities and social sciences. Scholars in these disciplines now use massive databases of materials that range from digitized books, newspapers, and music to transactional data such as web searches, sensor data, or cell phone records. The Challenge seeks to discover what new, computationally based research methods might be applied to these sources."

Read more at JISC News..... or access the report to understand how big data might affect your research.

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

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In the most recent issue of D-Lib Magazine, Natasha Simons examines the growing culture of data citation around use of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) System. In discussing the recent collaboration between ANDS and DataCite to produce the Cite My Data Service, and the implementation of DOIs at Griffith University, she reveals the complexities and benefits of adopting DOIs for research data collections in Australia.

Article Abstract:

Research is increasingly collaborative and global in nature, and efforts to manage the vast amounts of research data generated daily require global solutions. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system provides a means of persistent identification of research data collections and datasets that is global, standardised and widely used. The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) partnered with DataCite to offer a DOI minting service. At Griffith University, implementing DOIs raised governance questions common to other institutions that encouraged discussion and collaboration.

Click here for the full article from D-Lib Magazine.