Data to Knowledge to Action: Building New Partnerships

The Obama Administration on Big Data and NSF on national efforts enabling data-driven discovery

On Tuesday, November 12, the Obama Administration hosted an event under the auspices of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Networking and Information Technology R&D program coordinating office titled “Data to Knowledge to Action: Building New Partnerships” which provides a progress report on the big data initiative first announced in March 2012.

The agenda, and more importantly several very useful background documents, can be found here: http://www.nitrd.gov/nitrdgroups/index.php?title=Data_to_Knowledge_to_Action

In conjunction with this event, NSF also issued a press release that summarized their progress in supporting the initiative, with many links to descriptions of specific projects and programs. The overview release can be found at: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=129244&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

UK Government Report: Seizing the Data Opportunity

UK data capability strategy: seizing the data opportunity

The UK Government has recently published a new report Seizing the data opportunity, which outlines the government’s strategy for UK data capability. The report highlights the need to increase training in data analytics and data science, and announces what promises to be a landmark event next year – an Open Science Data Forum hosted by the Royal Society.

A brief summary of the report and a pointer to the full document is at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-data-capability-strategy

Sloan Foundation Awards ARL Grant to Develop SHARE for Access to Publicly Funded Research

Sloan Foundation Awards ARL Grant to Develop SHARE for Access to Publicly Funded Research

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has been awarded $50,000 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to help develop the proposed SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE). SHARE is a joint initiative of ARL, the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) to collaboratively build a cross-institutional coordination framework for the long-term management and preservation of—and expansion of access to—the results of academic research. The initiative was made urgent by the February 22, 2013, memorandum from the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directing federal agencies to develop draft plans for the public deposit of research articles and data sets associated with federal funding.

Through SHARE, universities and their libraries aim to enhance the public discovery and reuse of articles and data that result from public funding. ARL has long worked to promote open access publishing as a means to spur innovation and advance science and research. “When the OSTP directive was issued, the ARL Board cheered,” said Elliott Shore, ARL executive director. “We are eager to engage with the university repository community, offices of sponsored research, and federal agencies directly to make this policy a success. The OSTP policy created a timely opportunity for the higher education community to better structure its strategies and systems for managing both data and publications. SHARE aims to take advantage of this opportunity to explore workflow solutions for research funded by federal agencies and, potentially, other funding bodies.”

More information about SHARE is available at: http://www.arl.org/focus-areas/public-access-policies/shared-access-research-ecosystem-share

Data Citation Developments | Blog Post

Data Citation Developments, Blog Post by John Kratz, California Digital Library

This is a nice sum-up of recent discussions and activities centering on the topic of data citation.

Citation is a defining feature of scholarly publication and if we want to say that a dataset has been published, we have to be able to cite it. The purpose of traditional paper citations– to recognize the work of others and allow readers to judge the basis of the author’s assertions– align with the purpose of data citations. Check out previous posts on the topic here.

Although in the past, datasets and databases have usually been mentioned haphazardly, if at all, in the body of a paper and left out of the list of references, this no longer has to be the case.

Last month, there was quite a bit of activity on the data citation front:

• The third version of the DataCite metadata schema was released at the DataCite Summer Meeting in Washington, DC.
• The Research Data Alliance (RDA) Data Citation Working Group met at the RDA Second Plenary Meeting, also in Washington.
• The Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) released a thorough report on data citation.
• A synthesis set of data citation principles combining principles from Future of Research Communication and e-Scholarship (FORCE11), the Digital Curation Center, CODATA, and DataCite was released.

Continue reading this blog post….

Data Publication Services Case Statement | RDA-WDS Interest Group

Data Publication Services Case Statement from the RDA-WDS Interest Group on Publishing Data

The draft Data Publication Services Case Statement was crafted by the RDA/WDS (Research Data Alliance/World Data System) Interest Group on Publishing Data.

The scope of the working group is to address processes, workflows, and solutions that currently exist (mostly as bilateral agreements) between individual parties within the data publication landscape, and investigate how these can be lifted to one-for-all services – with an aim to increase interoperability, decrease systemic inefficiencies, and power new tools and functionalities to the benefit of researchers.

The group led by Dr. Hylke Koers (Elsevier) will be presenting and discussing this document at the upcoming RDA Second Plenary Meeting in Washington on Tuesday afternoon, September 17, 2013.  

Higher Ed Associations Form Joint Steering Group to Build Federated System for Publicly Funded Research

ARL, AAU, and APLU Form Joint Steering Group to Build Federated System (SHARE) for Publicly Funded Research

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) today announced the formation of a joint steering group to advance a proposed network of digital repositories at universities, libraries, and other research institutions across the US that will provide long-term public access to federally funded research articles and data.

The steering group will oversee a feasibility study, guide policy, and explore governance structures necessary for prototyping and implementing the network. This repository network, the SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE), is being developed as one response to a White House directive instructing federal funding agencies to make the results of research they fund available to the public.

To continue reading….

Association of American Publishers Responds to OSTP Directive

AAP Releases Statement on a Directive from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Deadline for Federal Agencies’ Public Access Plans

In response to a directive from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), a number of publishing organizations are collaboratively developing the Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States (CHORUS), with support from the Association of American Publishers.

More than 70 organizations representing all segments of scholarly publishing and service providers have joined as signatories. Its Proof of Concept will be released on August 30 and a pilot will be underway by the end of September.

More information is available here: http://www.stm-publishing.com/aap-releases-statement-on-ostp-deadline-for-federal-agencies-public-access-plans/

New Federal Guidelines Are Coming | University of Virginia Library

What’s Next?

Many of us have been waiting for forthcoming announcements from different government funding agencies in response to the OSTP’s Memo that was released in February 2012. The Data Management Consulting Group at the the University of Virginia Library has created a useful web page about this news. 

Researchers, did you know that there are changes coming that will require the results of your federally funded research (including not only the publications, but also the data) to be made publicly available?

It has been 6 months since the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released their memorandum on “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research”: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/22/expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research. Federal granting agencies with budgets over $100M were required to submit their plans to enable increased public access to the results of publicly funded research by August 22. This directive expands upon steps the NIH and NSF have taken in recent years, requiring open access for publications from funded projects (NIH) and data management plans (NIH/NSF). However, this new directive goes beyond these measures (particularly in the area of access to data), and it will affect at least 20 additional federal funding agencies. We will likely see the effects beginning with program proposals in late 2013 or early 2014.

To continue reading…

National Agenda for Digital Stewardship

NDSA 2014 National Agenda for Digital Stewardship

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance has recently released its 2014 National Agenda for Digital Stewardship, which can be found at: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndsa/nationalagenda/index.html

Clifford Lynch, Director of CNI, describes this report as:

This is a very valuable concise survey and agenda for high priority areas of digital stewardship; it’s also important because it reflects the wide consultation and breadth that characterizes the important leadership and coordinating work of the Alliance. 

Request for Info from National Institutes of Health

NIH Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative RFI

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has just issued a call for information on software tools and analysis methods as part of their Big Data to Knowledge Initiative.

Details can be found here: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-HG-13-014.html

Responses are due by September 6.