Presentation given by Rebecca Grant of the Digital Repository of Ireland at the Digital Preservation for Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (DPASSH) conference, Dublin, 26 June 2015. This paper investigates how guidance on research data management differs for researchers in the sciences, social sciences and humanities.

1. Identifying HSS research data for
preservation – a snapshot of current
policy and guidelines
Rebecca Grant, Digital Archivist, Digital Repository of Ireland
Doctoral student, School of History and Archives,
University College Dublin

2. • Part of wider PhD research on archivists engaging with
research data. What is
research data and how does
it compare to traditional
archival collectons?
Research context
• How is research data defined
for researchers in the
Sciences, Humanities and
Social Sciences? Who is
providing these definitions? Image: "Digital Preservation Business Case
Toolkit http://wiki.dpconline.org/".

3. Why is research data published?
Image: "Digital Preservation Business Case
Toolkit http://wiki.dpconline.org/".
• Allow reproduction of
experiments
• Increase researcher
profile/encourage reuse and
citation
• Advance knowledge in the
field
• Fulfil Open Access
obligations

4. An old tradition and a new technology have converged to
make possible an unprecedented public good. The old
tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to
publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals
without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge.
The new technology is the internet. The public good they
make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of
the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free
and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars,
teachers, students, and other curious minds. The
Budapest Open Access Initiative

5. Research Data publication
Policy:
Journals
Funders
Institutions
Academic
Publications,
project
documentation
Practical
Manuals

6. Research Data in the Sciences
“A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continually
extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be
consulted”. Vannever Bush, Atlantic Monthly, 1945.
[f]aced with massive data, this approach to science —
hypothesize, model, test — is becoming obsolete. Chris
Anderson, Wired, 2008.
Volumes of reusable scientific data and analytical
methods allow data to speak “free of theory”. Rob
Kitchin, The Data Revolution, 2014.

7. Humanities research data
“Compared with some other disciplines researchers in the arts and
humanities do not publish a great deal of research data.” Data Dimensions
“The first step... is achieving consensus over what research data comprises,
and the forms it takes.” Pinning it Down
“Research in the arts is highly complex and varied, often comprising a wide
variety of outputs and formats…” KAPTUR project
Arts and Humanities Data Service Collection Policy: “archaeological excavation
archives; historical, reference, and other databases; electronic texts and
musical scores; linguistic corpora; geospatial data; images; digital sound and
video; mixed media installations; VR and CAD”

8. Social Sciences research data
Established data centres: Irish Qualitative Data Archive and Irish Social Science
Data Archive in Ireland; the UK Data Archive, formerly Qualidata (1967), Data
Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) in the Netherlands (formerly the
Steinmetz Foundation) 1964 and the Harvard-MIT Data Center, formerly the
Government Data Center, 1960s
Established policy: data centres, journals(Social Science
Quarterly, American Sociological Review)
Established practice: practical manuals for data management,
for example Managing and Sharing Data: Best Practice for
Researchers, UKDA

9. Conclusions
Image: "Digital Preservation Business Case
Toolkit http://wiki.dpconline.org/".
• In the Sciences – well
developed. Benefits of sharing
data known.
• Social Sciences – practical
guidance for researchers,
established archives.
• Humanities – under
development, practice not
well established.

10. @beck_grant
r.grant@ria.ie
beck.grant@gmail.com
www.dri.ie
The content of this presentation is licensed as CC-BY unless otherwise stated. Please attribute
to Rebecca Grant, Digital Archivist, Digital Repository of Ireland, 2015.