Applying DC to Institutional Data Repositories

Abstract

DISC-UK DataShare is a JISC-funded collaborative project led by EDINA, with the London School of Economics and the Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Southampton. This poster will look at how each partner is developing exemplars for the deposit of research datasets in open access institutional repositories (IRs). Datasets are not different from other digital materials in that they need to be described, not just for discovery but also for preservation and re-use. The GRADE project found that Dublin Core descriptive metadata was sufficient for discovery within a DSpace repository, though more in-depth metadata or documentation was required for re-use after downloading. In the absence of a Dublin Core application profile for research data, the project partners have looked at the other metadata models, such as DDI and STFC. The poster will also cover self-archiving versus assisted deposit of datasets, policies and licenses, and the need to establish relationships with researchers at key points in the data life cycle to build trust and user-centred curation services.