Current status of scientific data curation research and practices in mainland China

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONWith rapid growth in activities and resulting body of scientific data, have become as important a strategic resource as natural resources and human resources. Scientific depends more and more on finding theories and knowledge from scientific data, and thus data-intensive scientific discovery has become fourth paradigm of scientific research. Therefore, it is urgent to develop and adopt methods to support collection, collation, preservation and utilization of scientific data, which are referred to as scientific curation.The term was first coined by Zorich (1995) in his paper on museum future collection management, to refer to maintenance and of museum objects and specimen information. At Digital Curation: Digital Archives, Libraries and e-Science Seminar, sponsored by Digital Preservation Coalition and British National Space Centre and held in London in 2001, term and with their modern meanings were proposed in context of e-Science which requires management, preservation, and sharing of a wide range of scientific (Beagrie & Pothen, 2001). However, specific definitions of these two terms were not mentioned at time.In 2002, Gray, Szalay, Thakar, Stoughton and Vandenberg (2002) mentioned term in their technical report about scientific publication and preservation. However, they also did not give a clear definition and only listed some related activities, such as recording gathering process, archiving all versions of programs and event logs, and keeping notes, memoranda and experimental data.In 2003, U K. Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) gave a clear definition to term for first time in its e-Science report: the activity of, managing and promoting use of from its point of creation, to ensure it is fit for contemporary purpose, and available for discovery and reuse (Lord & Macdonald, 2003). Here, refer to digital primary generated in academic and scientific research (Lord & Macdonald, 2003).After examining various definitions of from 2003 to 2007, Yakel (2007) concluded that digital has increasingly become an umbrella concept that includes preservation, curation, electronic records management, and asset management. However, he did not give clear definitions to these two terms.The Digital Curation Center (DCC), a U.K.-based center with a focus on building capacity, capability and skills for management, gives a formal definition to digital curation as maintaining, preserving and adding value to throughout its lifecycle (Digital Curation Centre, 2004). It also made a subtle distinction between data curation and digital curation as follows: both of them refer to looking after and adding value to data, and moreover latter also implies creating some new from existing to ensure its current and future usefulness (Digital Curation Centre, 2008). In 2011, Walters and Skinner (2011) distinguished between these two terms according to their application scope and deemed that is applied most often in science, engineering and social science fields whereas is used more frequently to describe humanities and arts environment.In China, some researchers also had discussions about intension and extension of these two terms. It has been generally recognized that is often used in U K. whereas is often used in USA (Wang, 2014; Xia, 2013; Yang, 2016). Data is also often used in natural science disciplines whereas is often used in libraries, archives and other social science disciplines (Wang & Shen, 2014). No matter how these two terms are defined, they do not have essential differences and can be used interchangeably in most cases. …