Data curation research paper competition winners announced
ICPSR is pleased to announce the winners of our 2014 Data Curation Research Paper Competition.
Tiffany Chao of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign earned first-place with her paper "Exploring the Role of 'Research Methods' in Metadata Description for Data Reuse." The paper investigates how research methods descriptions are represented in contemporary metadata schemas for research data, with a focus on what information about the data production process is required for metadata inclusion. She is a graduate research assistant with the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Her research focuses on enhancing metadata for data reuse across multiple
disciplines through the analysis of scientific practices and communication.
Rebekah Cummings, a recent MLIS graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, won the second-place prize for her paper, "Much Ado About Data: Intellectual Property Issues Surrounding Academic Research Data." The paper frames the complex issues surrounding intellectual property and data curation, including the unique nature of data, the motivations behind open data sharing, and the legal landscape that undergirds current data practices. The paper also demonstrates how librarians can use the four factors of fair use--purpose, nature of the work, amount used, and effect on the market--when assessing risk in data reuse. While at UCLA, Cummings worked as a graduate student researcher on Dr. Christine Borgman's research team and interned at the UCLA Social Science Data Archive. She was named the 2013 UCLA Chancellor's Marshall, and her culminating project at UCLA, "Data Curation in Social Science Research," was honored as a 2013 Showcase Portfolio. Cummings now works as the Assistant Director of the Mountain West Digital Library at the University of Utah.
The first-place winner received $1,000; the second-place prize is $750.
Jul 7, 2014