According to Graham Pryor, editor of Managing Research Data,

" .... the data deluge of the 21st century is a phenomenon that, if left unchallenged and unmanaged, is likely to result in considerable financial waste as well as opportunity loss. When considering the massive investment of time, intellectual effort and hard cash that goes into a research programme, should we not be expecting to draw more from the data generated than can be extracted from a well honed paper or series of papers? Surely data produced so expensively should not be treated as spoil, put aside like the waste materials from an intellectual mine?

"Neither is this a simple monetary argument, for without due attention, without the systematic shaping of datasets for subsequent reuse or re-purposing, such careless disdain for source data is likely to spawn a host of missed opportunities in economic, social and scientific advancement."

This new book covers a range of data management issues:

• The data management lifecycle
• Policies
• Sustainability of research data
• Plans and planning
• Roles and responsibilities
• National research data strategies
• Emerging infrastructure and services for research data management and curation.

The excellent first chapter is online, and so is the Table of Contents. It would be good to see this offered as an e-book, but it's print only for now.

Graham Pryor is Associate Director of the UK's Digital Curation Centre.

January 2012; 224pp; paperback; 978-1-85604-756-2; £49.95.