Data Management Plans and Data Re-use Issues

Research is expected to proceed by correcting, extending, and adapting prior work. Historically, the record was primarily in the form of published textual accounts (books, articles, reports, etc.) made accessible by an infrastructure of writing practices, peer review, publishers, libraries, and bibliography. The use of computers in research results in a larger, fuller digital record (data sets, simulations, etc.) that remains largely unusable for lack of a comparable infrastructure of descriptive practices, data curation, repositories, and access services. This situation is finally getting attention. NSF, NIH, and other research funders are now mandating data management plans.

How extensive are these problems? How wasteful is it? What needs to be done? — by whom? — and how? Should there be explicit curricular components to prepare future scholars better for these challenges?

Michael Buckland and Clifford Lynch will lead a discussion of these issues. Join us!