Research Data in eCommons@Cornell: Present and Future
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Abstract
As funding agencies increasingly prioritize sharing of research data, the role of institutional repositories (IRs) to house this material is likely to increase as well. By its very nature, data differs from the more traditional material housed in IRs such as publications, presentations, theses and dissertations. Cornell University’s IR, eCommons, is a DSpace powered repository available for materials in digital formats that may be useful for educational, scholarly, research or historical purposes. Upon deposit, users can assign an item type; presently, “dataset” items represent less than one half of one percent of total content. Under the assumption stated previously, an effort to optimize functionality of eCommons to handle data could be helpful to accommodate future data deposits. To evaluate what potential eCommons users value in a repository for research data, we reviewed several sources of researcher feedback collected at Cornell and elsewhere. Presented here are: 1) a summary of eCommons usage for data, including an analysis of “dataset” file types 2) a summary of preferences for IR-based research data services at Cornell, gathered via interviews and a survey, 3) an assessment of how well eCommons is currently serving these data-specific needs. Finally, we’ll consider, what additional functions might reasonably be met and what challenges we might face within the constraints of current infrastructure.