DISC-UK DataShare: state-of-the-art review

Description/Abstract

DISC-UK DataShare is a collaborative project led by the University of Edinburgh, with the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Southampton. Its central aim is to develop a model for the deposit of social science datasets in institutional repositories (IRs). The review shows that, although policies and practices currently operate to gather, store and preserve data, chiefly in national, subject-based data centres, much data remains unarchived and is at serious risk of being lost. DataShare believes that IRs may be developed to rescue some of this ‘orphaned data’ and make it available for future research, to the benefit of research communities and wider society.

This Review has been undertaken to provide background information to inform the work of DataShare, to summarise and consolidate recent research and current policy relating to data sharing, and to identify knowledge gaps that may need to be addressed during the course of the project. It is also intended to inform the wider community, particularly librarians, of the current state-of-play.