[okfn-coord] Fwd: Press Release: JISC helps researchers to meet the research data challenge

Tue Dec 8 10:30:19 UTC 2009

Looks like CKAN could be relevant here. Would be good to start
thinking about potential academic partnerships.

Jonathan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nicola Yeeles <n.yeeles at jisc.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 10:18 AM
Subject: Press Release: JISC helps researchers to meet the research
data challenge
To: JISC-ANNOUNCE at jiscmail.ac.uk

Press Release

JISC helps researchers to meet the research data challenge

JISC is marking the launch of its research data management programme at the
UK e-Science All Hands meeting this week. The programme helps researchers,
institutions, funders and policy makers meet the challenge of keeping
research data for re-use in the future. A new briefing paper is also published.

Researchers in almost all disciplines now create 'data' in digital form.
Some data are well-managed and kept so that they can be re-used in future.
But the majority go un-catalogued, are stored in an ad hoc fashion and are
thus lost to posterity, resulting in a failure to reap the full potential of
investment from present day research.

JISC’s Managing Research Data programme is addressing the research data
challenge from new perspectives, plugging notable gaps in current knowledge
and making links between the needs of researchers, institutions and policy
makers.

The programme, which ends in 2011, will provide researchers and institutions
with case studies of good research data management, better tools for
managing research data and training materials.  Improved tools for citing,
integrating and linking data, including to publications, will also be
developed. Policy makers will gain a clearer understanding of researchers’
and institutions’ requirements, a better view of the value of different
types of data and a roadmap outlining the steps needed to achieve a coherent
UK policy for research data.

'Research and scientific innovation depend on finding, integrating and
re-using the products of previous research,' argues Dr Simon Hodson, JISC
e-research programme manager.  'As research becomes increasingly reliant
upon information and data held in a digital form the question of how these
resources are maintained becomes of vital importance.

'The Managing Research Data programme is addressing the sector’s need for
both the infrastructure required to manage research data effectively and the
skills and knowledge-base needed to make the most out of the research data
asset,' he concluded.

Dr William Kilbride, director of the Digital Preservation Coalition, will
introduce the programme during the poster session at All Hands, encouraging
participants, all of whom create research data, to think about how they can
ensure that their work has a lasting impact.

JISC is a major sponsor at All Hands this year. See more details of the
meeting. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/12/allhands09

Find out more about 'Meeting the Research Data Challenge' in the briefing
paper. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/bpresearchdatachallenge

Read about the Managing Research Data programme.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/mrd

Explore JISC's research 3.0 activity
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/campaigns/res3

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org