Workshop 1

Gauging the Impact of Requirements for Public Access to Data

The datasets created by different branches of science are incredibly diverse in terms of size, content, and intellectual accessibility. In order to decide how and what to preserve for public consumption, and in what manner the data will be stored and accessed, a series of dialogues is required. Discussions within individual disciplines must reach a consensus on data preservation procedures and data access guidelines consistent with discipline-specific expectations for data re-use, access policies, and the level of burden implied by conservation that is placed on the individual investigator. The workshops are designed to “take the pulse” of the research community on these issues. A final report containing suggestions for best practice and implementation will be submitted to the NSF upon completion of the workshop series. Attendees are expected to act as ambassadors for their disciplines in order to participate in the broader deliberations and to communicate potential findings.

The first workshop will open these discussions, with the intent of producing a “straw man” position paper that can be disseminated to discipline-specific meetings, hopefully generating more discussion and suggestions for improvement. While nucleated on the disciplines forming the core of the Mathematical and Physical Science (MPS) Directorate, the workshops will benefit from the experience and opinions expressed by representatives of other NSF Directorates, including the Social Sciences, Biological Sciences, Geosciences, and Engineering and CISE. Attendees are also expected to include experts on existing repositories in the US, such as Dataverse, DataOne, etc., representatives from public access and preservation efforts in other geographical areas, for example the European Zenodo or Pangaea projects, and representatives from global projects such as the Research Data Alliance and CODATA.