Communities, Collaboration, and Conversation: Building Blocks for Data Curation

Over the previous decade research intensive institutions have recognized the need to provide data management services to their research communities. The services are targeted first at the data sharing and management requirements mandated by federal funding agencies, and second to broader and more hopeful ideologies of sharing in the research environment. At the University of Miami a data curation initiative was begun in 2009 and formalized in 2015 to develop strategic thinking on how to meet these service goals. Thus far the initiative has focused on needs assessment and community building around data curation. This research process has produced some valuable administrative data and has also served as a community building effort. Incentivizing good data curation and best practices promotes cultural change in the research community. Talking to researchers that seek data curation assistance contributes to this culture change. We present preliminary reflections from this process which also includes curriculum development for early career researchers, a critical component of community building around data curation.