RDAP12 summit: Challenges and opportunities for data management

Abstract

Editor's Summary Librarians, data managers and educators convened at ASIS&T's third annual Research Data Access and Preservation Summit in March 2012 to discuss the complex issues involved in managing research data. Major topics included the sociocultural landscape of data management, education and training for data managers, and data citation practices. Among the many questions without answers were the issues of revenue sources and whether science data curation services are better handled by institutions or scientific communities. Financial and technical sustainability are critical, together with human sustainability, including data managers' training and education. While the relative importance of data management theory and technical skills was a matter of debate, all supported the need for continuing education in data curation. There was agreement that current data citation practices are inconsistent and that citation metadata standards and unique and persistent identifiers for datasets are necessary.