Overview of Emerging Requirements for Data Management of Federally Funded

Research in the GeosciencesEvolution of the Data Life Cycle

(Geoscience Information Society) Technical Session 95

Richard Huffine

Geological Society of America2015 Annual Conference

Baltimore, Maryland, USANovember 3, 2015

Overview

• Recent History

• Presidential Directive

• Legislation

• Data Management

• Open Data and Public Access

• Public Domain

• Creative Commons

• Impact on Geoscience

Researchers

• Options for Sharing Your Data

• Questions?

• Contact Information

Recent History

• Federal agencies fund research in a variety of ways:– Grant solicitations– Partnership Agreements– Student internships– Contracts with universities– Contracts with companies

• The products of those activities have rarely been claimed to be the property of the government

– New requirements do not change the ownership of scholarship and date

• It does, however, require that the results of research be made publicly available

Recent History

• Public availability means:– Free to read– Defined rights for re-use, reproduction, acknowledgement

• In addition to new federal requirements, many other funders or partners are establishing expectations for transparency, access, and utility of research and the data used to produce it

– College and University policies– Grantmaking Foundations– Publishers– Societies and Associations

• Even some research disciplines are beginning to coalesce around standards of practice for data availability and use.

Presidential Directive

• On February 22, 2013, the White House issued a directive, requiring that the results of taxpayer-funded research – both articles and data – be made freely available to the general public. The goal of the directive was to accelerate scientific discovery and fuel innovation.

• U.S. Government agencies with annual research and development expenditures over $100 million are required to develop a plan for accomplishing the goals of the directive.

• Agencies covered by the directive had until August 22, 2013 to develop a plan for implementation. As of now, 24 Agencies have self-identified as meeting the requirements of the Directive and 15 of them have released at least draft plans.

Presidential Directive

• Agencies that fund geoscience research:

– Department of Agriculture– Department of Defense– Department of Energy– Department of Interior* ^– Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)*– National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)– National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)– National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)– National Science Foundation (NSF)– Smithsonian Institution

*- these agencies have yet to release their plans.

^ - While the Department of Interior has not released a plan, the USGS released an updated Instructional Memo on Scientific Data Management in February 2015. That policy does not explicitly address federally-funded research that may include external partners.

(see: http://www.sparc.arl.org/advocacy/national/directive )

Legislation

• Currently Pending:– H.R.1426 - Public Access to Public Science Act, Referred to the Subcommittee

on Research and Technology on August 18, 2015– S.779 - Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act of 2015,

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably on July 29, 2015

– H.R.1477 - Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act of 2015, Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on March 19, 2015.

• Prior efforts:– 2005 - 2013 - Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA)- there were

versions of the bill in the 109th, 111th, and 112th Congresses – 2011 - 2013 - Research Works Act (RWA) introduced and died in the 112th

Congress

Data Management

• All of the plans either require or encourage the creation and adherence to Data Management Plans.

• These Plans may be required submissions as part of a grant request or may be incorporated into the partnership agreement between federal agencies and external partners in the future.

• The DMPTool (https://dmptool.org/) is a free tool available to researcher to:

– Draft data management plans that comply with the requirements of specific funding agencies

– Provides easy to follow instructions for building a data management plan– Informs users of resources and services available to help follow the plan that you draft

• Data management is required at the beginning of a research effort but it should be reviewed, revised, and followed throughout the life of a project

Data Management

• The data-management-planning process not only ensures access to data that supports published research, it also ensures that research data is documented, deposited, and made available for other researchers.

• Each agency plan addresses different aspects of the challenge of making research data available. NASA is planning to “explore the development of a research data commons, a federated system of research databases.”

• The U.S. Department of Energy is planning to provide digital object identifiers (DOIs) to datasets resulting from its funded research in order to improve the discoverability and future citation of datasets.

Open Data and Public Access

• This effort is part of the Administration’s Open Government Initiative and it places an emphasis on data availability and reuse as well as the ability for people to reproduce the results of research.

• The various agency-specific plans that have been released also require the release of data sets upon publication of articles or as part of the completion of a project.

• The approach to releasing data is rarely prescribed and varies from:– encouraging the use of “approved external repositories,” – prescription to use existing data centers, – use of an “interoperable data infrastructure,” or – no specific requirement, just to use a public repository.

• The plans speak of developing “Enterprise Data Inventories” or creating data catalogs or locator services for the public to find data based on the source of funding.

Open Data and Public Access

• Some of the plans for data mirror the requirements for publications. That would allow for up to a 12-month embargo of the material from the date of publication. Others require that data be made available at the time of publication.

• The plans are not aligned across organizations. Some focus only on data that supports a publication. Others distinguish between short-term data access and long-term data preservation.

• There is a crowd-sourced compilation of elements from all of the publicly released plans at:

– https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PYOhBh6bglh6BkQFlpvNLOwlpzvQyguWAG8AkQMtU0s

Public Domain

• It is important to note that in the United States, data cannot be copyrighted. The control or protection of rights for an aggregation of data is also limited.

• The copyright and control of data, datasets, and databases is very different in other parts of the world.

• Creators can however license data, data sets or databases. Releasing research data under a license is one approach that could potentially meet both the funders requirements and the interests of their research partners.

See: Miller, Arthur R. "Copyright Protection for Computer Programs, Databases, and Computer-Generated Works: Is Anything New Since CONTU?." Harvard Law Review (1993): 977-1073.

Ginsburg, Jane C. "Copyright, common law, and sui generis protection of databases in the United States and abroad.” University of Cincinnati Law Review. 66 (1997): 151.

Creative Commons

• Many producers grant narrow permissions to use data via a “terms of service” agreement. A lot of data sharing also occurs among researchers in an ad hoc manner.

• Copyright and similar restrictions may otherwise limit dissemination or reuse of data but data sharing can be facilitated by distribution under standard, public legal tools used to manage those terms.

• Creative Commons licenses and the CC0 (C-C-zero) public domain dedication can facilitate data sharing while maintaining specific permissions for the use of the data.

See: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Data

Impact on Geoscience Researchers

• The impact of his emerging network of requirements is difficult to determine today. One thing is certain, if you work with multiple agencies, you will need to navigate conflicting guidance and reporting requirements.

• Many institutions (large research Universities, Federal laboratories, consortia, etc.) are working to get in front of the curve and develop standard practices that exceed any specific requirement.

• There are a number of federal research initiatives that are partnering with funders and recipients to ensure that the requirements don’t add too much of a burden to the work of researchers:

– DataOne - https://www.dataone.org/ – Earth Cube - https://www.nsf.gov/geo/earthcube/ – Data Conservancy - https://dataconservancy.org

Options for Sharing Your Data

• NIH Data Sharing Repositories – 69 different providers listed– https://www.nlm.nih.gov/NIHbmic/nih_data_sharing_repositories.html

• Dryad Digital Repository – prices start at $75/submission for a non-member and go down based on volume

and affiliation.– http://datadryad.org/

Questions?

Contact Information

Richard Huffine (orcid.org/0000-0002-8974-2750)https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardhuffine richardhuffine@gmail.com