“Which researchers are willing to share data, when, with whom, and under what conditions?”
This was the central question at the start of the Data Curation Profiles project, an endeavor between Purdue University Libraries and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The project has resulted in the creation of the Data Curation Profiles Toolkit and the Data Curation Profiles Directory.
Data Curation Profiles describe the origin and lifecycle of a data set or collection within a research project. They are records that can describe the data itself, identify an audience for the data, outline terms of use, and give preference for the storage and preservation of the data. A good comparison would be to an archival collection’s finding aid, that describes and enumerates the contents of a collection.
Each published Profile receives a DOI and has its metadata records delivered to Worldcat, Primo, Summon, and EBSCO Discovery. The Profiles Directory is registered with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Ulrich’s. Profiles are further indexed by Google Scholar, EBSCO, and ProQuest products, and completed Data Curation Profiles published through the Directory are archived with CLOCKSS and Portico.
Researchers can find more information on submitting profiles here, and questions regarding the creation, use, and maintenance of profiles are encouraged to be posted to the user forums.
The Health Sciences Library strategic plan for 2013-15 includes objectives to promote academic research and scholarship at our institution. This includes collaborating with researchers to curate their data for the NYMC community. NYMC-affiliated researchers are encouraged to discuss their research and data curation needs with their librarian liaison.