Preservation, access and re-use of research data A Publishers perspective……and how we can help Joep Verheggen, Elsevier PARSE.insight workshop, Darmstadt, 22 September 2009

2 Context …… increased availability of primary sources of data in digital form has the potential to shift the balance away from research based on secondary sources such as publications, thus positioning data as the central element in the scientific process. (a statement from the Director of the Directorate General for Information Society and Media of the European Commission, 2008) If the raw data doesnt form a central part of the scientific record then we perhaps need to start asking whether the usefulness of that record in its current form is starting to run out. (from a blog called Science in the Open: the-pain-and-embarassment-make-all-the-raw-data-available/ the-pain-and-embarassment-make-all-the-raw-data-available/..let us get back to the days where observational scientists could justify peer reviewed publication primarily on the basis of collection, description and reporting of high quality data sets (usually with some basic level of interpretation.. Quote taken from a discussion paper called The Risk-Reward Basis for Data Publication (marine sciences, 2007) Problem = scientific community does not see online data as publication (from a presentation called: How to motivate scientists to publish data online, Mark J. Costello. June 2008)

3 what makes researchers decide to publish data.. Simply put motivation infrastructure process Genetics Materials sciences application reward & recognition community culture collaboration instructions (& mandates) modelling & simulation commercial applications long term preservation Re-evaluation

4 What do scientist want…….

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7 What do Publishers currently do…… Instructions to authors in Tetrahedron

8 Supplementary files are linked directly from an articles abstract page.

9 Supplementary files are referenced within the article text and linked via the articles abstract page using the doi.

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11 How do Publishers view research data in the context of IPR The Publishing Industry (STM/ALPSP) position is : It is also stated that: …..believe that, as a general principle, data sets, raw data outputs of research, and sets or subsets of that data should wherever possible be made freely accessible to other scholars (Statement from STM & ALPSP, June 2006) ….articles published in scholarly journals often include tables and charts in which certain data points are included or expressed. Journal publishers often do seek the transfer of or ownership of the publishing rights in such illustrations.., but this does not amount to a claim to the underlying data itself..

12 Research data and the Publishers Mission Can we contribute to the data dissemination/retrieval process? Storing, Linking Search, Discovery Can we contribute to research workflows ? Meta-data, collections, ontologies Visualization, mining, etc Can we meaningful contribute to an editorial process for data? Submission processes editorial organization, review Publishers are committed to making genuine contributions to the research communities….. support to the scholarly communication process increased availability of research output increased citations to research output increased overall quality of research develop new means of knowledge discovery increase in the research efficiency

13 Support through the journal networks and publishing platforms General instructions to make available available as supplementary information with the online article Textual references to data repositories & datasets Verbal instructions, limited support by editorial team More granular definition of research data and supplementary information Specific instructions & mandates how, when and where to submit, and how to cite. Specific sustainable destinations for research data Agreed formats & metadata requirements for data submission Expand editorial teams with a data- editor Hyper-linking between articles and (final) dataset destinations and v.v. Federated searching Intelligent (contextual) referencing of datasets in articles Move from…..To………. Note: a successful implementation requires a combination of domain specific and generic solutions

14 working examples……..

15 Visa versa

16 Digital object identifiers – for data(sets)

17 A possible solution Creation of new and strenghtening of existing data centers. Global access to data sets and their metadata through existing catalogues. By the use of persistent identifiers This and the following slides are taken from Jan Brases presentation

18 Results Citability of primary data High visability of the data Easy re-use and verification of the data sets. Scientific reputation for the collection and documentation of data (Citation Index) Accepting the rules of good scientific practice Avoiding duplications Motivation for new research

19 What the DOI System Can Do to Help

20 Project The German Research Foundation (DFG) has started the project Publication and Citation of Scientific Primary Data to increase the accessibility of scientific primary data, starting with the field of earth science. The German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) is now established as a non- commercial DOI-registration agency for scientific primary data as a member of the International DOI Foundation (IDF).

21 Data and article The DOI system offers an easy way to connect the article with the underlying data: The dataset: G.Yancheva,. R Nowaczyk et al (2007) Rock magnetism and X-ray flourescence spectrometry analyses on sediment cores of the Lake Huguang Maar, Southeast China, PANGAEA doi: /PANGAEA Is cited in the article: G. Ycheva, N. R. Nowaczyk et al (2007) Influence of the intertropical convergence zone on the East Asian monsoon Nature 445, doi: /nature05431

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28 Quasi mash-up type of interaction

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30 Collaborations is the way to go…….

31 In conclusion Do Publishers recognise the importance of data publishing YES Can Publishers help to get research data in the open? YES Will Publishers help to improve the discoverability of data? YES …..and YES: Solutions must be scalable & sustainable Existing capabilities should be used as much as possible We need to secure buy-in from the researchers and research communities as well as the policy makers

32 And finaly Thank you for your attention……..