D-Lib Magazine
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The Magazine of Digital Library Research
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D-Lib Magazine

January/February 2011
Volume 17, Number 1/2
Table of Contents

 

Editorial

Research Data

Laurence Lannom
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
llannom@cnri.reston.va.us

doi:10.1045/january2011-editorial

 

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The management of research data in a digital networked world is increasingly recognized as a significant challenge, a significant opportunity, and absolutely essential to the conduct of scientific research in the 21st century. One group that has risen to this challenge in recent years is DataCite. Founded in 2009 it is focused on the reliable identification and citation of scientific datasets. I attended their first large public meeting last summer and, impressed by the program, asked Jan Brase, the Managing Agent of DataCite, if he would consider putting together a special issue of D-Lib devoted to datasets. Jan agreed and he and Adam Farquhar, the President of DataCite, served as Guest Editors of this special issue.

The first piece is a brief introduction to DataCite written by the Guest Editors. This is followed by nine articles on various data related topics, eight of which are derived from that DataCite meeting last summer and one of which (Waaijers) happened to come in unsolicited at the time we were putting the issue together and was too good to leave out. The articles cover a wide variety of topics, including the acquisition and management of scientific data, the quality and trustworthiness of that data, the connections between data and traditional scholarly publishing, metadata for datasets, and last but not least a peer reviewed journal devoted to the publication of datasets.

I want to thank Jan and Adam, and all of the authors, for their hard work and I hope that you the readers will find the issue of interest and benefit. This is a key topic for the digital library community going forward and we will continue to cover it in future editions of the magazine.

 

About the Editor

Photo of Laurence Lannom Laurence Lannom is Director of Information Management Technology and Vice President at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), where he works with organizations in both the public and private sectors to develop experimental and pilot applications of advanced networking and information management technologies.
 
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