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1. Pearls and pitfalls: a story of a programmatic data pull

   Hofelich Mohr, Alicia; Kozlowski, Wendy; Taylor, Shawna (March 2023, Research Data Access and Preservation)

   As requirements for swift and sustainable data sharing are growing, questions of where and how researchers are sharing data are becoming increasingly important for institutions to answer. One of the goals of the Reality of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative, comprised of six academic institutions from the Data Curation Network (DCN), was to answer this question. This presentation will discuss the process of how RADS determined where data from our researchers are shared. To do this, we programmatically pulled DOIs from DataCite, making the naive assumption that the information we were collecting, the metadata fields we were utilizing, and the platforms we were using would present us with a neutral and unbiased view of where data from our affiliated researchers were shared. However, as we dug into the data, we found inconsistencies in the use and completeness of the necessary metadata fields for our questions, as well as differences in how DOIs were assigned across repositories. While we expected some differences, we did not anticipate these subtle differences would dramatically affect how we interpret the answer to the question of where data are shared. Our presentation will highlight examples in our work that show how these subtleties in the data are systematic and challenge our assumptions of neutrality of not just the data, but of our platforms and practices as well. By examining these biases, we are forced to reexamine the decisions behind how we practice and, as we move forward as information and repository managers, how to reduce bias or assumption of neutrality. As a community, we often rely on data-driven decisions and decision makers need to be aware of these biases, especially as we are likely to see increased investments due to the evolving data policies and practices. 

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2. Researcher and Institutional Impact of Data Management and Sharing Policies

   Carlson, Jake (December 2023, CNI)

   The last 15 years have seen a marked growth of data management and sharing policies among federal agencies in the US and Canada. While these policies have an undeniable impact in terms of increased publicly available datasets, they have also impacted the research practices of funded researchers and the services and infrastructure provided by institutions. Researchers and institutions alike share the responsibility to align practices with funding agency requirements concerning data management and sharing, but each stakeholder group has responded in ways that may not align with one another. This presentation delves into research resulting from the National Science Foundation-funded Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative and provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of services and infrastructure of six academic institutions, as well as an overview of the overall impact of these policies for researchers and institutions. Insights into services, infrastructure, and impact can lead to the creation of streamlined pathways for enhancing institutional efficiencies in data management and sharing. 

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3. Toward Reusability: Preliminary Metadata Best Practices From the Realities of Academic Data Sharing Initiative

   Taylor, Shawna; Haberman, Ted (June 2022, IDCC)

   Incomplete and inconsistent connections between institutional repository holdings and the global data infrastructure inhibit research data discovery and reusability. Preventing metadata loss on the path from institutional repositories to the global research infrastructure can substantially improve research data reusability. The Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation, is investigating institutional processes for improving research data FAIRness. Focal points of the RADS inquiry are to understand where researchers are sharing their data and to assess metadata quality, i.e., completeness, at six Data Curation Network (DCN) academic institutions: Cornell University, Duke University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Washington University in St. Louis, and Virginia Tech. RADS is examining where researchers are storing their data, considering local institutional repositories and other popular repositories, and analyzing the completeness of the research data metadata stored in these institutional and other repositories. Metadata FAIRness (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) is used as the metric to assess metadata quality as FAIR complete. Research findings show significant content loss when metadata from local institutional repositories are compared to metadata found in DataCite. After examining the factors contributing to this metadata loss, RADS investigators are developing a set of recommended best practices for institutions to increase the quality of their scholarly metadata. Further, documentation such as README files are of particular importance not only for data reuse, but as sources containing valuable metadata such as Persistent Identifiers (PIDs). DOIs and related PIDs such as ORCID and ROR are still rarely used in institutional repositories. More frequent use would have a positive effect on discoverability, interoperability and reusability, especially when transferring to global infrastructure. 

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4. Think Globally, Act Locally: The Importance of Elevating Data Repository Metadata to the Global Infrastructure

   Taylor, Shawna; Wright, Sarah; Narlock, Mikala R.; Habermann, Ted (June 2022, Open Repositories)

   Inconsistent and incomplete applications of metadata standards and unsatisfactory approaches to connecting repository holdings across the global research infrastructure inhibit data discovery and reusability. The Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative has found that institutions and researchers create and have access to the most complete metadata, but that valuable metadata found in these local institutional repositories (IRs) are not making their way into global data infrastructure such as DataCite or Crossref. This panel examines the local to global spectrum of metadata completeness, including the challenges of obtaining quality metadata at a local level, specifically at Cornell University, and the loss of metadata during the transfer processes from IRs into global data infrastructure. The metadata completeness increases over time, as users reuse data and contribute to the metadata. As metadata improves and grows, users find and develop connections within data not previously visible to them. By feeding local IR metadata into the global data infrastructure, the global infrastructure starts giving back in the form of these connections. We believe that this information will be helpful in coordinating metadata better and more effectively across data repositories and creating more robust interoperability and reusability between and among IRs. 

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5. COGR, FDP, and ARL: Putting Numbers Behind Institutional Expenses for Public Access to Research Data

   Vitale, Cynthia Hudson; Taylor, Shawna; Luther, Jim; Keene, Christi; Korf, Melissa (April 2022, Coalition for Networked Information)

   As data management and sharing policies have expanded in the federal and private funding spheres, the costs to support institutions and researchers in meeting these expenses for services and infrastructure are not fully understood. A number of higher education organizations are conducting research and developing tactics for cost assessments of infrastructure and services distributed within institutions. This panel will present a snapshot of work recently started at the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP), the Council of Government Relations (COGR), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to investigate where public access to research data costs are incurred at an institution, with the goal of assisting universities in defining a strategy for planning for those costs. 

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