data curation

Leadership opportunities

8 December, 2009

Those interested in leadership in Digital and Data Curation should keep an eye on the relevant UK press and lists over the next week or so for anything of interest...

Workshops prior to the International Digital Curation Conference

18 November, 2009

Pre-conference workshops can be very useful and interesting; they can be a good part of the justification for attending a conference, giving an extended opportunity to focus on a single topic, followed by a broader (but shallower) look at many topics, at the conference itself. This time it is quite frustrating, as I would very much like to go to all the workshops! There is still time to register for your choice, and for the IDCC conference itself.

Curated databases and data curation

5 August, 2009

I've been working on an article with a colleague, and came across something that's interesting, and that you might be able to help us with. There does appear to be a distinction between the way curation is used in the bio-sciences, and elsewhere. In particular, the term "curated database" tends to mean a manually constructed database that links literature to data, curated by experts who provide authority (eg see the Wikipedia definition of Biocurator).

New nature corresponding author policy on data

4 May, 2009

Thanks to Michael Jubb for pointing me to the editorial outlining the new Nature policy:

Report on Data Preservation in High Energy Physics

2 March, 2009

There's a really interesting (if somewhat telegraphic) report by Richard Mount of SLAC on the workshop on data preservation in high energy physics, published in the January 2009 issue of Ariadne. The workshop was held at DESY (Deutsche Elektronen-Synchrotron), Hamburg, Germany, on 26-28 January 2008.

UKRDS session 4

26 February, 2009

At last the big bucks: Paul Hubbard from HEFCE. Policy case for a national service: if it needs to be done, can be done, and they have the resources, then they will do it. National policy & funding picture: have had a very good ten years (CR: sounds ominous) for a world-class national research base. Note HEFCE now a minority funder of research; comes about 3rd in the ranking in UK. Can’t say HEFCE will fund this but can say HEFCE will work with others to fund it. Low note: recession ☹. HEFCE role: hands out money for research but doesn’t say what it’s for, celebrate that.

UKRDS session 3

26 February, 2009

Ross Wilkinson, Director of Australian National Data Service (ANDS),live via satellite (saving carbon, if not sleep) has been building on lot of work particularly in the UK. Role of data more etc; now answer questions unrelated to why the data were collected originally. Who cares and why varies a lot. Pleased that Australian Govt cares to extent of $24M. Institutions driven by the Code for responsible conduct of research (CR: blogged about this before): have to take data seriously. Not clear if disciplines care at the national level (some have cared at an international level).

UKRDS Conference 2

26 February, 2009

John Coggins, VP for Life Sciences from Glasgow on researcher’s perspective. Wants to prompt us to think, about “culture change” and resources.

UKRDS conference 1

26 February, 2009

(Andy Powell liveblogging this at http://tinyurl.com/dhfdbn)Chaired by John Wood, who chairs the UKRDS Steering Committee, talking big numbers: 20 PByte per year from CERN, 200 PByte per year from some German project…