[ICPSR] [OR-Announce] White Paper Urges New Approaches to Assure Access to Scientific Data

[Mark Thompson-Kolar]

 More than two dozen data repositories serving the social, natural, and
physical sciences today released a white paper recommending new approaches
to funding the sharing and preservation of scientific data. The document
emphasizes the need for sustainable funding of domain repositories -- data
archives with ties to specific scientific communities.

“Sustaining Domain Repositories for Digital Data: A WhitePaper” (PDF
52KB)<http://datacommunity.icpsr.umich.edu/sites/default/files/WhitePaper_ICPSR_SDRDD_121113.pdf>,
is an outcome of a meeting convened June 24-25, 2013, in Ann Arbor. The
meeting, organized by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
Social Research (ICPSR) and supported by the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation<http://www.sloan.org>,
was attended by representatives of 22 data repositories from a wide
spectrum of scientific disciplines.

Domain repositories accelerate intellectual discovery by facilitating data
reuse and reproducibility. They leverage in-depth subject knowledge as well
as expertise in data curation to make data accessible and meaningful to
specific scientific communities. However, domain repositories face an
uncertain financial future in the United States, as funding remains
unpredictable and inadequate. Unlike our European competitors who support
data archiving as necessary scientific infrastructure, the US does not
assure the long-term viability of data archives.

“This white paper aims to start a conversation with funding agencies about
how secure and sustainable funding can be provided for domain
repositories,” said ICPSR Director George Alter. “We’re suggesting ways
that modifications in US funding agencies’ policies can help domain
repositories to achieve their mission.”

Five recommendations are offered to encourage data stewardship and support
sustainable repositories:


   - Commit to sustaining institutions that assure the long-term
   preservation and viability of research data
   - Promote cooperation among funding agencies, universities, domain
   repositories, journals, and other stakeholders
   - Support the human and organizational infrastructure for data
   stewardship as well as the hardware
   - Establish review criteria appropriate for data repositories
   - Incentivize Principal Investigators (PIs) to archive data

While a single funding model may not fit all disciplines, new approaches
are urgently needed, the paper says.

“What’s really remarkable about this effort -- the meeting and the
resulting white paper -- has been the consensus across disciplines from
astronomy to archaeology to proteomics,” Alter said. “More than two dozen
domain repositories from so many disciplines are saying the same thing:
Data sharing can produce more science, but data stewards must know the
needs of their scientific communities.”

This white paper is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the role
of scientific domain repositories and their critical role in the
advancement of science. The paper and additional information about the
Building Community Engagement project can be viewed at
http://datacommunity.icpsr.umich.edu. <http://datacommunity.icpsr.umich.edu>
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