Neil Beagrie has shared a pointer to the newly-released interim report on the feasibility study that the UK has commissioned for a research data service. This includes a good deal of material surveying the current state of the art in the UK and beyond, and has obvious relevance as we think about programs like DataNet in the United States. I've taken the liberty of reproducing Neil's posting to the Digital Preservation list in full below. The report is at:
Clifford Lynch Director, CNI
(Neil Beagrie's full post)
Members of the list may be aware of the consultancy lead by Serco Consulting over the last six months on a UK Research Data Service feasibility study for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
The interim report of the study has just been released and is
available from
The report analyses the current situation in the UK with a detailed review of relevant literature, funders' policies, and data drawn from four major case study universities (Bristol, Leeds, Leicester, and Oxford). It describes the emerging trends of local data repositories and national facilities in the UK and also looks internationally at Australia, the US and the EU. Finally it presents possible ways forward for UKRDS. Preliminary findings from a UKRDS survey of over 700 UK researchers are presented in an Appendix. The study has now moved into its second phase building on the interim report and developing the business case.
Luis Martinez-Uribe, Digital Repositories Research Co-ordinator at
Oxford University has written on the interim report in his blog "I
highly recommend everyone with an interest in research data
management to have a look at this report as not only it captures the
current state of affairs in the UK and elsewhere but also offers
possible ways forward." See
There is also another short blog entry at
Neil Beagrie
Charles Beagrie Ltd
Digital Access and Preservation
Management and Research Consultancy
Website:
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