1. MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology, MIT Libraries
Science Commons Research Fellow, Creative Commons
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4. The world’s first hard drive (5Mb)
IBM Almaden Research Center, 1952-1954
That Was Then
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5. Current capacity hard drive (>2Tb)
Google Data Center, 2010
This is Now
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6. How Much Information?
“IDC research shows that the digital universe —information that is
either created, captured, or replicated in digital form — was 281
exabytes in 2007. In 2011, the amount of digital information
produced in the year should equal nearly 1,800 exabytes, or 10
times that produced in 2006. The compound annual growth rate
between now and 2011 is expected to be almost 60%”
The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe, 2008 IDC White Paper
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7. How Much Information?
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Sequence Submissions to DNA DataBank of Japan 1993-2005
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8. What Is Research Data?
Observational e.g. sensor, telemetry, survey, sample data
Experimental e.g. genetic sequences, chromatograms
Simulation e.g. climate, economic, 3-D models
Media e.g. images, audio, video
Derived/compiled e.g. text/data mining, compiled databases
Often expensive or impossible to reproduce
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9. What Is Research Data?
Text e.g. flat text files, Word, PDF
Numerical e.g. SPSS, STATA, Excel, MySQL
Media e.g. jpeg, tiff, dicom, mpeg, quicktime
Models e.g. 3D, statistical
Software e.g. Java, C programs
Domain-specific e.g. FITS in astronomy, CIF in chemistry
Instrument-specific e.g. Olympus con-focal microscope
Not always in neat packages like books
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10. What Do Researchers Do With
Data?
 Analyze (e.g. process, visualize)
 Share
 Review (evaluate methods)
 Annotate
 Cite
 Re-use (reproduce results)
 Re-purpose (e.g. integrate)
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11. Data Sharing Innovations
 New-fangled Hybrid Articles
 Integrate text, data and tools
 Enhanced PDFs
 Linked Open Data
 Access to data via Web standards to
encourage large-scale interoperability
 “Data Papers”
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12. Issues in Data Curation
 Storage very large scale
 Metadata what standard to use?
 Provenance research methods
 Identifiers scalability, persistence
 Preservation see slide #5 on formats
 Sharing laws confusing, not interoperable
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13. Data Sharing Trends
“The NIH expects and supports the timely release
and sharing of final research data from NIH-
supported studies for use by other
researchers.” NIH grant proposal guide
Similar data management, sharing mandates from
US NSF, other funding agencies worldwide
Journals mandating deposit
(e.g. Journal of Evolutionary Biology)
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14. Data Interoperability
IPR and data licenses
 Lots of data not copyrightable since facts cannot be
copyrighted
 UK, EU, some other countries have sui generis
data rights
 Laws not “interoperable”
Big problem for international scientific
collaborations and data re-purposing
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15. BWIN presentation ©2010, MIT 15

16. Libraries and Data
Established curation for some data types
statistical (Harvard-MIT Data Center)
geospatial (Geodata Repository)
bioinformatics (via NLM NCBI)
digital media (e.g. images, videos)
datasets (IR digital archives)
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17. BWIN presentation ©2010, MIT
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18. Libraries and Data
Applies to both faculty-authored and
externally-acquired data
 Consultation services (in-person, via Website)
 Liaise with data archives (e.g. ICPSR)
 Develop (meta)data standards (e.g. DDI)
 Manage and preserve data
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19. BWIN presentation ©2010, MIT 19

20. Robotics Data in DSpace@MIT
The Library:
 Defined local taxonomy for metadata values
 Customized metadata records
 Adapted/simplified deposit workflow
 Loaded data from previous repository
 Added CC0 licenses
Review of new deposits done by community
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23. Researcher’s Role: Data Provision
e.g. Sage Commons
“The Sage Commons is a novel information platform being built by an
international partnership of researchers and stakeholders to define the
molecular basis of disease and guide the development of effective
human therapeutics and diagnostics.
The Sage Commons will be used to integrate diverse molecular mega-data
sets, to build predictive bionetworks and to offer advanced tools proven
to provide unique new insights into human disease biology. Users will
also be contributors that advance the knowledge base and tools
through their cumulative participation.
The public access mission of the Sage Commons requires the development
of a new strategic and legal framework to protect the rights of
contributors while providing widespread access to integrative genomics
resources.”
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24. Library’s Role: Data
Curation
 Data organization and annotation
e.g. ontologies and metadata
 Data archiving, preservation
e.g. perpetual access
Outreach and support to local researchers
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25. Publisher’s Role: Data Accreditation
 Require data deposit to archives
 Publish data journals
 Manage peer review (quality control)
 Provide credit for data publishing
(evolution of promotion & tenure system)
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26. Data Papers Revisited
“a formal publication whose primary purpose is to
expose and describe data, as opposed to
analyze and draw conclusions from it.”
1. Organize peer-review, establish quality-control measures
2. Create citable entity
3. Establish cross-linking mechanisms with traditional papers, to enforce
separation of concerns (methodology vs analysis)
4. Specify required documentation to make data re-usable, re-purposable
5. Apply standard interoperable legal license
(CC0 or PDDL with normative attribution, CC-By with URI attribution)
6. Ensure archiving strategy in place
Jonathan Rees, Recommendations for independent scholarly publication of data sets, Creative
Commons Working Paper, March 2010,
http://neurocommons.org/report/data-publication.pdf
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27. Questions?
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