DataShare Project
March 2007 - March 2009
Funded by JISC Digital Repositories and Preservation Programme
Rationale | Aims & objectives | Partnership
DISC-UK DataShare, led by EDINA, arises from an existing UK consortium of data support professionals working in departments and academic libraries in universities (Data Information Specialists Committee-UK), and builds on an international network with a tradition of data sharing and data archiving dating back to the 1960s in the social sciences. By working together across four universities and internally with colleagues already engaged in managing open access repositories for e-prints, this partnership will introduce and test a new model of data sharing and archiving to UK research institutions. By supporting academics within the four partner institutions who wish to share datasets on which written research outputs are based, this network of institution-based data repositories develops a niche model for deposit of ‘orphaned datasets’ currently filled neither by centralised subject-domain data archives/centres/grids nor by e-print based institutional repositories (IRs).
The project's overall aim is to contribute to new models, workflows and tools for academic data sharing within a complex and dynamic information environment which includes increased emphasis on stewardship of institutional knowledge assets of all types; new technologies to enhance e-Research; new research council policies and mandates; and the growth of the Open Access / Open Data movement.
Objectives:
- Build capacity of institutional repositories in UKHE to respond to the unique requirements of research datasets as a new 'document type'
- Use a range of open source software repository solutions - Eprints, DSpace, Fedora - to provide exemplars and add-on tools for managing datasets as institutional repository items
- Produce and disseminate findings - in cooperation with the Repositories Support Project (RSP) and the Repositories Research Team (RRT) - to inform library and repository managers about the organisational and technical issues associated with the deposit of research data
- Work with the RSP, Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and others to identify training needs and solutions for increasing skills of information professionals in UKHE for managing research data
The DataShare project is based on a distributed model in which each participating partner is responsible for the work on their own repositories, yet experience, support and knowledge are shared in order to increase levels of success. This builds on the existing informal collaboration of DISC-UK members for improving their data libraries and models of data support at each institution. It will also bring academic data libraries in closer contact with e-Prints repository managers and develop new forms of cooperation between these distinct groups of information professionals within academic environments. The advantage for the broader community is to provide exemplars for a range of approaches and policies in which to embed the deposit and stewardship of datasets in IRs. These will be demonstrated using the three main repository solutions in the UK: EPrints, DSpace and Fedora.
 View diagram of project partner institution's repository experience.
For more information pertaining to the project, please browse the website or contact the project manager.
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