The US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), in collaboration with Duke University, the University of Minnesota, and Washington University in St. Louis, all of whom are members of the Data Curation Network (DCN), a $741,921 National Leadership Grant to examine institutional expenses for public access to research data. This research builds upon ARL’s existing Realities of Academic Data Sharing initiative.
Public access to research data is critical to advancing science, solving real-world problems, and supporting research integrity. In recent years, a number of funding agencies and publishers have required the management and broad sharing of research data and other related research outputs to accelerate and expand the impacts of their investments. Research institutions, and the research libraries at these institutions, have invested in and developed infrastructure and services to support researchers in meeting these requirements. These services and infrastructures are not only housed in the library, but are spread across the institution, in various administrative units, such as campus IT, the research office, and institutes and research centers. Given the growth in demand, its distributed nature, and functional nuance, the costs of public access to research data and data sharing are not well understood. The many unknowns about the institutional landscape for funded research-data sharing hamper collaborations and institutional ability to plan and budget appropriately.
“Academic and research libraries have made significant investments in support of federal agency requirements for public access to research data, yet have little institutional data about these services, infrastructure, and costs,” said ARL Vice President/President-Elect Trevor A. Dawes, vice provost for Libraries and Museums and May Morris University Librarian at the University of Delaware. “Funding agencies, institutions, and organizations must understand the local landscape and the required investments necessary to optimize public access to research data. This research helps to further our understanding of these investments.”
Building upon ARL’s previous National Science Foundation grant, this work will expand research into the expense and service models for public access to research data by digging deep into the expenses within an institution (including campus IT, the research office, centers and institutes, and libraries) and recruiting a diverse set of five institutions to participate in the next round of research. As an incentive for participating, these five institutions will receive a no-cost two-year membership in the DCN and access to a full-time DCN employee to assist with local, institutional research-data services outreach and service development.
Grant funds will be used for community building, research-team staffing, and tools and technology.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of research libraries in Canada and the US whose vision is to create a trusted, equitable, and inclusive research and learning ecosystem and prepare library leaders to advance this work in strategic partnership with member libraries and other organizations worldwide. ARL’s mission is to empower and advocate for research libraries and archives to shape, influence, and implement institutional, national, and international policy. ARL develops the next generation of leaders and enables strategic cooperation among partner institutions to benefit scholarship and society. ARL is on the web at ARL.org.
About the Data Curation Network
The Data Curation Network (DCN) is a membership organization of institutional and nonprofit data repositories whose vision is to advance open research by making data more ethical, reusable, and understandable. Our mission is to empower researchers to publish high-quality data in an ethical and FAIR way, collaboratively advance the art and science of data curation by creating, adopting, and openly sharing best practices, and supporting thoughtful, innovative, and inclusive data-curation training and professional development opportunities. The Data Curation Network is based at the University of Minnesota and can be found online at datacurationnetwork.org.
About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. We advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development. IMLS envisions a nation where individuals and communities have access to museums and libraries to learn from and be inspired by the trusted information, ideas, and stories they contain about our diverse natural and cultural heritage. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
