From Curation to Compliance: Supporting Research Data Sharing at Scale

A major challenge for US academic institutions is compliance with new and evolving requirements for public access to research data at a time when resources are often already at capacity in terms of storage, personnel, and other resources. Researchers rely on institutional resources in research computing, central IT, and libraries to support their data-intensive work, but how do institutions sustainably meet the challenges of data access at scale while ensuring the long-term value of the data resources generated by our research communities and compliance with external funder requirements— In this presentation, we provide original research showcasing examples of leadership partnerships, collaborative experimentation, and radical collaboration to meet these challenges. We will share the results of an NSF-funded study, the Realities of Research Data Sharing, which sought to understand the expenses and investments made by faculty and campus offices into public access to research data infrastructure and services. Next, we will deep dive into two institutional research data service programs at Princeton University and North Carolina State University that exemplify interinstitutional collaboration across service units. Finally, we will share some lessons learned from cross-institutional collaboration for data-sharing among 16 member organizations—and growing—from the Data Curation Network.