Abstract
This article considers digital curation in doctoral study and the role of the doctoral supervisor and institution in facilitating students’ acquisition of digital curation skills, including some of the potentially problematic expectations of the supervisory relationship with regards to digital curation. Research took the form of an analysis of the current digital curation training landscape, focussing on doctoral study and supervision. This was followed by a survey (n=116) investigating attitudes towards importance, expertise, and responsibilities regarding digital curation. This research confirms that digital curation is considered to be very important within doctoral study but that doctoral supervisors and particularly students consider themselves to be largely unskilled at curation tasks. It provides a detailed picture of curation activity within doctoral study and identifies the areas of most concern. A detailed analysis demonstrates that most of the responsibility for curation is thought to lie with students and that institutions are perceived to have very low responsibility and that individuals tend to over-assign responsibility to themselves. Finally, the research identifies which types of support system for curation are most used and makes suggestions for ways in which students, supervisors, institutions, and others can effectively and efficiently address problematic areas and improve digital curation within doctoral study.
Highlights
IntroductionDoctoral students are engaging in research data creation, processing, use, management, and preservation activities (hereafter referred to as digital curation)
More than ever before, doctoral students are engaging in research data creation, processing, use, management, and preservation activities
For most research students digital curation is an intrinsic part of their study and a skill that they are expected to acquire to an appropriate level by completion
Summary
Doctoral students are engaging in research data creation, processing, use, management, and preservation activities (hereafter referred to as digital curation). ‘I look upon the role of data management for a new researcher as being one of those essential skills that you really ought to get at the same time as you learn how to handle your references, as you understand methodology, as you get to grips with the theory that is going to set the frame by which you do your research. It sits alongside those and it’s equal to them. Despite the somewhat dated focus on data acquisition (as opposed to the whole data curation lifecycle) and databases (as just one form of digital asset), these 2001 guidelines ( incorporated into the Vitae Researcher Developer Statement as “information literacy and management” (2011)) demonstrate the firm expectation from funders that researchers engage in sound digital curation practices
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