Data Matters presents a series of interviews with scientists, funders and librarians on topics related to data sharing and standards.
Mark Thorley
Head of Science Information and Data Management Co-ordinator at the National Environment Research Council, UK
This month’s theme is preservation. Mark Thorley identifies two issues: one is preservation of the data, and the second is preservation of the knowledge to use data, which tends to be lost as people move on and retire, meaning that we lose knowledge about how to reuse data effectively as a result.
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Robert Cook
Scientist at the Distributed Active Archive Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA
The second in our blogs on data preservation gives the view from the Oak Ridge National Lab, a programmatic archive for the NASA terrestrial ecology programme, which endeavours to archive data for a user 20 years in the future. Robert Cook describes the difficulty in doing this, when it’s hard to predict how a researcher might use data in five years’ time, let alone 20!
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Russell Poldrack
Professor of Psychology and Neurobiology and Director of the Imagining Research Center, University of Texas in Austin
Professor Poldrack believes that preservation is one of the most fundamental and important aspects of data sharing. However, he is concerned with how we make preservation of data sustainable, given that centers like his have to curate the datasets, and believes it is researchers who are ‘really responsible’ for making sure their data are preserved.
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Please also check out the first issue of Data Matters, including interviews with Timothy Rowe, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Patricia Soranno and Simon Hay.