Data Curation Activities in Research Data Repositories: Best Practices

Abstract

Although, the massive amount of research data is being generated through modern-day research activities, lack of awareness regarding the documentation, metadata rendering, versioning, file format selection, data cleaning, secure storage options, data deposit templates and making research data easily accessible through research data repositories has resulted in invaluable research data becoming lost or rejected. Proper management and sharing of research data increase the access, impact and efficiency of research activities. Therefore, as a requirement of the government funding agencies’ guidelines academic and research institutions have started to establish research data repository platforms. However, to build effective research data repositories with appropriate data curation activities are needed before uploading and publishing data. The current study has been undertaken with the primary objective of presenting the best data curation activities in research data repositories. The study further gives an overview of the software tools and applications available for various data curation activities viz. data cleaning, metadata creation, editing images/ videos, storing data, identifying and validating data files, applications for data curation and data indexing for searches among other core activities. The author further identifies the roles of interdisciplinary librarians and data generators and data providers to perform the best data curation activities in research data repositories. The methodology of the study was guided by content analysis of literature on data curation activities and the role of interdisciplinary librarians in data repositories. Additionally, data about the software and application tools available for data curation was collected through web surveys. The outcome of this study will greatly benefit the key stakeholders in adopting the best practices for data curation practices in research data repositories for enabling research data sharing and reuse. It will help in the development of required skills and competencies to full-fil the role of interdisciplinary librarians in data curation activities.