Research Data Management Principles, Practices, and Prospects Page: 36
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36
Spencer D. C. Keralis, Shannon Stark, Martin Halbert, and William E. Moen
library budgets. This could potentially threaten to further weaken
support for non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math-
ematics) research in favor of funding agency and university admin-
istration priorities that in many cases researchers in the STEM disci-
plines do not (yet) share.
How then do we finally understand the current status of re-
search data management efforts in academia? In the two and a half
years since NSF announced its data management plan requirement,
academic libraries have scrambled to keep up with what continues to
be perceived as another unfunded mandate. Returning to the nauti-
cal metaphors popular in discussions of big data, we are neither rid-
ing the wave nor being swamped by it. Rather, we may be becalmed,
mired in the Sargassum of institutional inertia.
There was a significant degree of hope that the February 2013
memo of the Office of Science and Technology Policy nudging fed-
eral agencies to come up with a coherent strategy would spark some
movement, but the August deadline for agency plans came and went
with no public announcements. This silence was soon followed by
the shutdown of the U.S. federal government in October 2013, an
event that is all too emblematic of gridlock and being stuck in the
doldrums. It now seems highly unlikely that vigorous and assertive
prescriptions for research data management will be forthcoming
from federal agencies, at least in the immediately foreseeable future.
In the absence of clear guidance from the federal agencies,
university administrations are likely to fall back on the all too easy
excuses for withholding resources from service providers --mainly
libraries--believing that the requirement for a data management
plan is a passing whim on the part of the agencies and that there is
no point in investing time, money, and staff without a clear return
on investment. Principal investigators, too, have room to doubt the
seriousness of the data-sharing mandate and may simply continue
to craft data management plans that reinforce the proprietary nature
of their data rather than planning to make them available to be pre-
served, shared, and repurposed. And libraries may continue to try to
meet the demands of both administrators and researchers with ever-
shrinking financial resources - the equivalent of diligently polish-
ing the decks and patching the sails in the vain hope that today the
winds will return.
We should not allow our institutions to continue to drift in the
data doldrums. To continue our metaphor, the promise of new lands
is too great for us to accept remaining becalmed. But if we are to
emerge from the doldrums, we will have to demonstrate stronger
leadership and make greater efforts to work together within our in-
stitutions. Rather than waiting passively, we should take serious ana-
lytic notes from the small number of exemplar institutions in which
librarians, researchers, and academic administrative leaders are
collaboratively developing a shared agenda for research data man-
agement. Rowing out of the doldrums will require hard work, and
we will have to row together to succeed. The question is not really
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Asher, Andrew; Deards, Kiyomi; Esteva, Maria; Halbert, Martin; Jahnke, Lori; Jordan, Chris et al. Research Data Management Principles, Practices, and Prospects, book, November 2013; Washington, DC. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc234929/m1/45/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .