Workshop on Research Data Lifecycle Management

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

The volume of data produced by computational modeling and analysis places increasing demands on researchers, IT staff, and IT infrastructure to store, manage, and move data. At the same time, funding agencies are enforcing and increasing requirements for management of data produced through grant funded projects. These pressures come together to put our institutions in a situation where they do not have established funding and best practices for managing this volume of data and, in addition, researchers and IT professionals do not have the data curation expertise to select data and create metadata to ensure the long term preservation and discoverability of important data. There is a strong need to bring these communities together with the library/archive community to consider data lifecycle management and to develop long term funding and data curation strategies that will help institutions to meet the increasing needs. The objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers, campus Information Technology (IT) leaders, and library/archive specialists to discuss the topic of data lifecycle management specifically as it relates to computational science and engineering research data. This discussion will result in a common understanding of best practices and funding models for selecting, storing, describing, and preserving this digital data. The workshop will also help to cultivate partnerships between these communities to foster continued developments in the preservation and sharing of research data. The recommendations and practices developed at this workshop will enable the more effective preservation and sharing of the huge quantity and volume of data sets produced by computational scientists and engineers. This workshop will directly impact the intellectual capabilities of our higher education institutions by initiating a sustained dialog into the lifecycle management of our research data. Faculty and staff who attend the workshop will return to their institutions better prepared to lead the effort to develop and improve research data lifecycle management practices. As these practices are established on campuses across the country, data will become more available to all institutions including those from economically disadvantaged areas. The broader availability of data will benefit research and education, impacting students and researchers.