Posts for the month of January 2013

PREPARDE at the International Digital Curation Conference 2013 (IDCC13)

IDCC13 was an important conference for the PREPARDE team, not just because we had an oral presentation in the Data Publication session, but also because it was the venue for the first of our three project workshops.

As always, the conference was very well attended, and digital technology and social media were used to enable those who weren't there physically to at least follow along. Videos of the keynote speeches, blog posts and storifys of tweets can all be found on the conference  homepage.

The PREPARDE presentation was titled "Processes and Procedures for Data Publication: a case study in the Geosciences" and raised a lot of interest ( slides can be downloaded here) - in fact at that stage of the data publication session I noticed that it was standing room only at the back! Angus Whyte (a PREPARDE team member) has written an excellent overview and summary of the whole session that can be found  here.

Thursday 17th January was the PREPARDE workshop, titled: "Data publishing, peer review and repository accreditation: everyone a winner?" (which I've been reliably informed was the first IDCC13 workshop to be sold out). The main focus for this workshop was on the tricky issue of repository accreditation, which was addressed by presenters from a wide variety of viewpoints, including, but not limited to publishers, professional societies and data repository managers. The slides are available  here (scroll down the page to find the workshop title and agenda) and I created a storify of the tweets sent during the workshop  here.

Angus and his DCC colleague Alex Ball took loads of notes during the workshop, and a full workshop report will be coming out soon. I'd like to take the opportunity again to thank all of our excellent speakers, and the workshop attendees for their lively input into our discussions during the day!

Report from the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

The American Meteorological Society held its  Annual Meeting in Austin Texas earlier this month, which gave Matt Mayernik and me the opportunity to hold forth on various aspects of data citation, peer review, etc.

Matt’s poster was based on current work with NCAR colleagues on ‘What Does Peer Review of Data Sets Mean and What Roles do Data Archiving and Quality Control Have in the Process?’ (attached). The poster compares/contrasts conventional peer review processes with data quality control processes in place at current NCAR data archives. It attracted interest from a number of delegates as well as the Editor of BAMS.

I presented on Geoscience Data Journal and PREPARDE, and Matt on the NCAR Data Citation Initiative to the  Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) strand of the meeting, which had several sessions around ‘Expanding Data’ and ‘Expanding Publications’. Several other speakers, including John Sandy of Alabama and Gloria Hicks of NSIDC, are working in compatible areas (see full program details  here) and there were some lively discussions, particularly in the breaks.

Other than that, there were some opportunities to further catch up on  EarthCube, the NSF-driven cyberinfrastructure project for the geosciences, which is of immense interest and potential importance for underpinning the future of data-driven research, particularly from North America. The other key development, from my point of view was the Town Hall meeting organised by the  AMS Board on Data Stewardship which is working on a wide-ranging position paper. Not only does this encompass data citation, encouraging good data management by producers, it is also looking at the status the ‘data scientist’ has within research institutions, and the influence of funders, policy makers and industry in all aspects of research data origination, use and management. It is simply the most ambitious mission I have yet to see from a learned society. I very much welcome this development and hope we have the opportunity to support its continuing progress.

  • Posted: 2013-01-22 10:35 (Updated: 2013-01-22 16:54)
  • Author: Fiona Murphy
  • Categories: (none)
  • Comments (0)