Last Updated on October 28, 2020, 10:44 am ET
In preparation for the December 2019 invitational conference, “Implementing Effective Data Practices,” hosted by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and California Digital Library (CDL), we conducted a series of short pre-conference interviews.
We interviewed representatives from scholarly societies, research communities, funding agencies, and research libraries about their perspectives and goals around machine-readable data management plans (maDMPs) and persistent identifiers (PIDs) for data. We hoped to help expose the community to the range of objectives and concerns we bring to the questions we collectively face in adopting these practices. We asked about the value the interviewees see or wish to see in maDMPs and PIDs, their concerns, and their pre-conference goals.
In an effort to make these perspectives more widespread, we are sharing excerpts from these interviews and discussing them in the context of the final conference report that was released recently. Over the next three weeks, we will explore and discuss interview themes in the context of broad adoption of these critical tools.
Why This Work Matters
To start off this series of scholarly communications stakeholder perspectives, we need to position the importance of this infrastructure within broader goals. The overall goal of the conference was to explore the ways that stakeholders could adopt a more connected ecosystem for research data outputs. The vision of why this was important and how it would be implemented was a critical discussion point for the conference attendees.
Benjamin Pierson, then senior program officer, now deputy director for enterprise data, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, expressed the value of this infrastructure as key to solving real-world issues and making data and related assets first-class research assets that can be reused with confidence.
Clifford Lynch, executive director, Coalition for Networked Information, stated how a public sharing of DMPs within an institution would create better infrastructure and coordination at the university level for research support.
From the funder perspective, Jason Gerson, senior program officer, PCORI (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute), indicated that PIDs are also essential for providing credit for researchers as well as for providing funders with a mechanism to track the impact of the research they fund.
Margaret Levenstein, director, ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), spoke about the importance of machine-readable DMPs and PIDs for enhancing research practices of graduate students and faculty as well as the usefulness for planning repository services.
For those developing policies at the national level, Dina Paltoo, then assistant director for policy development, US National Library of Medicine, currently assistant director, scientific strategy and innovation, Immediate Office of the Director, US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, discussed how machine-readable data management plan are integral for connecting research assets.
All of the pre-conference interviews are available on the ARL YouTube channel.
Natalie Meyers is interim head of the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship and e-research librarian for University of Notre Dame, Judy Ruttenberg is senior director of scholarship and policy for ARL, and Cynthia Hudson-Vitale is head of Research Informatics and Publishing for Penn State University Libraries.
