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Big data

How do your data grow?

Nature volume 455, pages 28–29 (2008)Cite this article

Scientists need to ensure that their results will be managed for the long haul. Maintaining data takes big organization, says Clifford Lynch.

To enable reuse, data must be well preserved. In some cases the effects of data loss are economic, because experiments have to be re-run. In other cases, data loss represents an opportunity lost forever. Funders now rightly view data as assets that they are underwriting and so seek the greatest pay-off for their investments. They demand that researchers and host institutions document and implement data-management and data-sharing plans that address the full life cycle of data — including what happens after a grant finishes. Host universities thus find themselves with legal and ethical obligations to provide a legacy of faculty data. Publishers must also identify the most effective ways to connect publications with data and preserve the scientific record.

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References

  1. http://www.lib.umn.edu/about/scieval/documents.html

  2. http://www.library.ucsb.edu/informatics/documents.html

  3. http://www.ctwatch.org/quarterly/articles/2005/02/scientific-data-management/

  4. ARL Workshop on New Collaborative Relationships Report to the National Science Foundation. To Stand the Test of Time: Long-Term Stewardship of Digital Data Sets in Science and Engineering (2006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clifford Lynch is the executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, 21 Dupont Circle, Washington DC 20036, USA, and an adjunct professor at the School of Information, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720-4600, USA. cliff@cni.org ,

    Clifford Lynch

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  1. Clifford Lynch
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See Editorial, page 1 . Join the discussion at http://tinyurl.com/6eedyu .

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Lynch, C. How do your data grow?. Nature 455, 28–29 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/455028a

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