The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of the Fall 2013 issue of Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) with a special theme of Data Curation. Interest in the topic of data curation has increased greatly as many governments and funding organisations have mandated that publicly funded research must be made more openly available–including not only the results published in journal articles, but also the underlying data. As a result, much discussion and work is under way around the process and tools needed to ensure that data can be made accessible for reuse and preserved for the long-term.
The feature article by Colin L. Bird, Cerys Willoughby, Simon J. Coles, and Jeremy G. Frey discusses Data Curation Issues in the Chemical Sciences, specifically the extent to which chemists respect the importance of curation in their day-to-day activities in the laboratory and at their computers. The authors emphasize that an essential ingredient in the curation process is metadata, particularly at the time data and information are created, which they describe as "curation at source."
Three "in practice" articles provide case studies for how data is curated in the European scholarly community in general and specifically in the fields of archeology and earth sciences.
Information Standards Quarterly is available in open access in electronic format on the NISO website. Both the entire Fall 2013 Data Curation issue of ISQ and the individual articles may be freely downloaded.
