ICPSR Publications on Data Stewardship

To address a broad range of subjects related to data stewardship, ICPSR staff and researchers have authored white papers and reports, as well as published articles. Some of these documents are the outcome of funded projects, while others outline ICPSR policy or training.

Sustaining domain repositories

Publication information

Ember, Carol; Hanisch, Robert. Sustaining Domain Repositories for Digital Data: A White Paper. Output of the workshop, “Sustaining Domain Repositories for Digital Data,” Ann Arbor, MI, June 24-25, 2013. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2013.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3886/SustainingDomainRepositoriesDigitalData

Executive summary

The last few years have seen a growing international movement to enhance research transparency, open access to data, and data sharing across the social and natural sciences. Meanwhile, new technologies and scientific innovations are vastly increasing the amount of data produced and the resultant potential for advancing knowledge. Domain repositories – data archives with ties to specific scientific communities – have an indispensable role to play in this changing data ecosystem. With both content-area and digital curation expertise, domain repositories are uniquely capable of ensuring that data and other research products are adequately preserved, enhanced, and made available for replication, collaboration, and cumulative knowledge building. However, the systems currently in place for funding repositories in the US are inadequate for these tasks. Effective and innovative funding models are needed to ensure that research data, so vital to the scientific enterprise, will be available for the future. Funding models also need to assure equal access to data preservation and curation services regardless of the researcher’s institutional affiliation. Creating sustainable funding streams requires coordination amongst multiple stakeholders in the scientific, archival, academic, funding, and policy communities.

Publication information

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Response to RFI: ‘Public Access to Digital Data Resulting From Federally Funded Scientific Research’ Office of Science and Technology Policy. Response paper. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2011.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3886/ResponseTORFI

Brief description

In this response to the 2011 Office of Science and Technology Policy’s request for information, ICPSR advocates Federal policies to improve the access and preservation of scientific data provides a detailed list of recommendations in response to the RFI.

Publication information

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Sustaining Domain Repositories for Digital Data: A Call for Change from an Interdisciplinary Working Group of Domain Repositories. Position statement. “Sustaining Domain Repositories Meeting,” Ann Arbor, MI, June 24-25, 2013. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2013.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3886/SustainingDomainRepositoriesforDigitalDataACallforChangefromanInterdisciplinaryWorkingGroupofDomainRepositories

Brief description

In February 2013, the U.S. Government’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum calling for all federal agencies funding data collection to create plans for public access to research projects. On June 24-25, 2013, representatives from 22 data repositories spanning the social and natural sciences met in Ann Arbor, MI. The meeting, organized by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, created a space to discuss the challenges facing repositories across domains, and to strategize around issues of sustainability. Attendees endorsed a unified call for change, stating that domain repositories must be funded as the essential piece of the U.S. research infrastructure that they are.

Research transparency

Publication information

Lupia, Arthur, and George Alter. Data Access and Research Transparency in the Quantitative Tradition. PS: Political Science & Politics 47, no. 01 (January 2014): 54-59.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096513001728

Abstract

The number of people conducting scientific analyses and the number of topics being studied are higher than ever. At the same time, there are questions about the public value of social scientific endeavors, particularly of federally funded quantitative research (Prewitt 2013). In this article, we contend that data access and research transparency are essential to the public value of the enterprise as a whole and to the credibility of the growing number of individuals who conduct such research.

Publication information

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Research Transparency, Data Access, and Data Citation: A Call to Action for Scholarly Publications. Position statement created at the “Data Citation and Research Transparency Standards for the Social Sciences Meeting,” Ann Arbor, MI, June 13-14, 2013. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2013.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3886/ResearchTransparencyDataAccessandDataCitation

Brief description

This document summarizes the Data Citation and Research Transparency Standards for the Social Sciences Meeting held in Ann Arbor, MI, June 13-14, 2013. It describes the emergent consensus about research transparency and then challenges scholarly journals and publishers to play a leadership role in this movement. At the same time, journals cannot do this work alone. Success will require the coordinated efforts of all stakeholders including professional associations, funding agencies, universities and their constituent academic departments, data repositories, researcher training programs, and researchers themselves.

Data sharing

Publication information

Kanous, Alex; Brock, Elaine. Contractual Limitations on Data Sharing. Report prepared for ICPSR as part of the “Building Community Engagement for Open Access to Data” project. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2015.

George Alter (Principal Investigator). Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant Number 2012-6-11.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3886/ContractualLimitationsDataSharing

Purpose

This report was commissioned by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research to engage in an in-depth review of exemplar data sharing, data license, non-disclosure, and other forms of agreements under which data are made available for research use. It is part of a project on “Building Community Engagement for Open Access to Data” sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.1 The intent of the review was to identify common limitations imposed on the use and re-disclosure of data, variations on those common limitations, and the implications of such limitations on the researcher. Finally, cognizant of the varying reasons for imposing these conditions of use, such as proprietary or privacy concerns, the review sought to identify approaches to conditional data use that represent the data discloser’s compelling concerns and the data user’s need for latitude in use, in a standardized way in order to facilitate data transfer and reduce the administrative burden of tracking a multitude of varying data use limitations.

Publication information

Kanous, Alex; Brock, Elaine. Model Data Sharing Agreement. Customizable model created as part of the “Building Community Engagement for Open Access to Data” project. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2015.

George Alter (Principal Investigator), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant Number 2012-6-11.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3886/ModelDataSharingAgreement

Publication information

Alter, George, and Richard Gonzalez. 2018. Responsible practices for data sharing, American Psychologist, Vol 73(2), Feb-Mar 2018, 146-156.

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000258

Purpose

Research transparency, reproducibility, and data sharing uphold core principles of science at a time when the integrity of scientific research is being questioned. This article discusses how research data in psychology can be made accessible for reproducibility and reanalysis by describing practical ways to overcome barriers to data sharing. We examine key issues surrounding the sharing of data such as who owns research data, how to protect the confidentiality of the research participant, how to give appropriate credit to the data creator, how to deal with metadata and codebooks, how to address provenance, and other specifics such as versioning and file formats. The protection of research subjects is a fundamental obligation, and we explain frameworks and procedures designed to protect against the harms that may result from disclosure of confidential information. We also advocate greater recognition for data creators and the authors of program code used in the management and analysis of data. We argue that research data and program code are important scientific contributions that should be cited in the same way as publications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

You can access more ICPSR publications on Deep Blue, University of Michigan’s institutional repository.

When citing these works, please include the persistent identifiers listed with each.