Abstract
In the spring of 2011, the UK’s Digital Curation Centre (DCC) commenced a programme of outreach designed to assist individual universities in their development of aptitude for managing research data. This paper describes the approaches taken, covering the context in which these institutional engagements have been discharged and examining the aims, methodology and processes employed. It also explores what has worked and why, as well as the pitfalls encountered, including example outcomes and identifiable or predicted impact. Observing how the research data landscape is constantly undergoing change, the paper concludes with an indication of the steps being taken to refit the DCC institutional engagement to the evolving needs of higher education.
Highlights
The seminal report Science as an Open Enterprise (Royal Society, 2012) declared that ‘a shift away from a research culture in which data is viewed as a private preserve’ is essential to achieving improvements in the exploitation of research
The subsequent and crucial step has been to assess the specific needs of the institution; usually applying tried and tested Digital Curation Centre (DCC) tools to discover the location and condition of data collections, and to understand current research data practices and aspirations
By the time the DCC had entered its third phase of operation, in March 2010, almost five years had passed since the UK funders’ expectations on access to published outputs had been summarized in a joint Research Councils UK (RCUK) position statement,4 which advocated open access to outputs from their funded research programmes
Summary
The seminal report Science as an Open Enterprise (Royal Society, 2012) declared that ‘a shift away from a research culture in which data is viewed as a private preserve’ is essential to achieving improvements in the exploitation of research. In its third phase of operation, from March 2010 to February 2013, the UK’s Digital Curation Centre (DCC) emerged from its esoteric adolescence to reveal a mature enterprise capable of providing in-depth, tailored support to a community of institutions known to be frequently ill-equipped to face the burgeoning challenge of research data management. With a significant budget injection from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), dispensed under the mantle of its Universities Modernisation Fund (UMF), the DCC’s outreach programme was, in the spring of 2011, immediately taken up a gear by the requirement to undertake 18 institutional engagements, each of which would be designed to assist individual universities in the acquisition of capacity and capability for managing their research data. In reflection of that ferment, an explanation of the steps being taken currently to refit the DCC’s institutional engagement to the evolving needs of the higher education sector will provide an apt conclusion to this narrative
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