Joyce M. Ray - Research Data Management: Practical Strategies for Information Professionals

Joyce Ray has brought together an impressive group of library thinkers and data management experts to cover all aspects of research data management now and into the future. This book covers the entire data life cyclefrom incentives and mandates for sharing research data, to metadata standards and best practices of describing data for discovery, to preservation and archiving of datasets for use by future generations. Information professionals in the library and archival communities are a natural fit to lead the myriad tasks of research data management, and they will find inspiration in the insights provided in each chapter.

Carol Tenopir

Chancellors Professor and Board of Visitors Professor
School of Information Sciences
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Increasing funder requirements relating to research data, combined with a growing awareness of the value that accessible, citable, reusable data can offer to researchers, mean that every research organisation needs to take research data management seriously as an institutional imperative. This timely book contains contributions on every aspect of the problem from people with practical experience of the solutions. The editor, Joyce Ray, has been closely involved with the communitys developing understanding of the challenges for many years; she has drawn together essential guidance and useful case studies that will be of value to all university information and research services.

Kevin Ashley

Director
Digital Curation Centre
University of Edinburgh

Research data management is becoming a crucial issue for European universities as they tackle the challenges posed by data-driven science. The League of European Research Universities (LERU) is about to publish its Roadmap for Research Data, which will guide universities in their decision making as they tackle the data deluge. This book, therefore, is timely and will provide well-documented guidance on the contributions that the library sector can make. Data-driven research has the potential to revolutionize the way research is conducted, and there is a tremendously important role for libraries to play.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services and UCL Copyright Officer
President of LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries)
Chair of the LERU Chief Information Officers Community

The variety of approaches and experiences give this book broad appeal for information professionals at different size organizations with different priorities. The details of the process that organizations went through to try and meet data services needs is extremely helpful. This manuscript gets down to the nuts and bolts, and the case studies are its greatest feature.

Stephanie Wright

Data Services Coordinator
University of Washington Libraries

As a research library-based data management specialist, I have struggled to find robust resources with up-to-date practical information without having to scour the Internet for hours. This book will be a major asset to all professionals who are in a similar position. It is important because it provides relevant, timely, practical information about topics that I deal with every dayrepositories, governance, copyright, metadata, data citation, and so forthand its all collected in one place. In a more philosophical sense, the book may provide a vehicle for getting everyone in the data services field on the same page with regard to the latest and greatest in research data management, in the sense that the book provides a benchmark for the state of our profession. We all recognize that data services are new to libraries, and many of us are doing a bit of DIY in terms of developing our services. The result of the pull yourself up by your bootstraps approach is that services vary wildly across institutions. The availability of a book like this enables librarians (and other data stewardship professionals) everywhere to seek out a common reference, which fosters dialog and consistency of approach.

Amanda L. Whitmire

Data Management Specialist
Center for Digital Scholarship and Services
Oregon State University Libraries and Press

This collection of timely articles on the emerging field of librarian support for research data management includes a good selection of topics and well-chosen authors. As a practitioner, I found the case study articles the most useful and interesting parts of the book. They were meaty, blow-by-blow accounts of how an organization, like mine, struggled and succeeded with these uncertain challenges of data management. This is not just a collection of articles written by key players from major grant-funded groups, but also real librarians implementing real services that you can relate to, and best of all, implement yourself.

Lisa Johnston

Research Services Librarian
Co-Director of the University Digital Conservancy
University of Minnesota Libraries

This book represents a foundational contribution from the guardians of institutional data that will give confidence to those who appreciate the huge potential of data based research in seeking solutions to global and societal challenges in the future.

John Wood

Secretary-General
Association of Commonwealth Universities
and European Chair of the Research Data Alliance

Research data will drive the next generation of innovation, and the deployment of effective data infrastructure is essential to enable data access and use. The topics in this book are both important and timely, and the contributors and editor read like a Whos Who of key players in the field.

Francine Berman

Chair of Research Data Alliance/US and Co-Chair of the
National Academies Board on Research Data and Information

A hallmark of every emergent profession is the initial codification of the knowledge that distinguishes it as a specialization. Research Data Management serves this function for the cluster of professionals coalescing to support data-intensive science, also known as e-science or cyberinfrastructure. The diverse talents of the contributors to this work reflect the rich intellectual roots undergirding this new data profession. Future generations of data curators, data scientists, data librarians, data managers, and other data specialists will look upon this volume as a seminal work.

Charles Humphrey

Research Data Services Coordinator
University of Alberta Libraries