On the role of research data centres in the management of publication-related research data: results of a survey among scientific infrastructure service providers

Abstract

"This paper summarizes the findings of an analysis among scientific infrastructure service providers. These service providers have been evaluated in regard to their potential services for the management of publication-related research data. By conducting a desk research and an online survey, we found out that almost three quarters of all responding research data centres, archives and libraries generally store externally generated research data – what also applies to publication-related data. Almost 75% of all respondents also store and host the code of computation (the syntax of statistical analyses). If self-written software components have been used to generate research outputs, only 40% of all respondents accept these software components for storing and hosting. Eight in ten institutions also stated that they are taking specific actions for digital long-term preservation of their data. In regard to the documentation of stored and hosted research data almost 70% of all respondents claimed to use the metadata schema of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI); Dublin Core was used by 30 percent (multiple answers were permitted). Almost two thirds also used persistent identifiers to facilitate citation of these datasets. Three in four respondents also stated to support researchers in creating metadata for their data. Application programming interfaces (APIs) for uploading or searching datasets currently have not been implemented by any of the respondents yet. Little widespread is the use of semantic technologies like RDF." [author's abstract]