Portage Network Releases White Paper on Research Data Discovery in Canada

July 26, 2016

OTTAWA, July 26, 2016 ­— The Portage Network has just released a white paper entitled Research Data Discovery and the Scholarly Ecosystem in Canada, written by members of the Portage Data Discovery Expert Group: Eugene Barsky (University of British Columbia), John Brosz (University of Calgary), and Amber Leahey (Scholars Portal, Ontario Council of University Libraries).

The Portage Data Discovery Expert Group was created to ensure that Canadian research data is comprehensively described through the use of appropriate standards and indexed in suitable tools to support its discovery, facilitate its access, and inform researchers of its potential reuse in a wide variety of contexts and by a broad range of users.

Supporting data creators and curators in planning, producing, and managing descriptive metadata for effective discovery across a wide variety of disciplines, this group also supports the integration of descriptive metadata with web-based discovery, alerting services, and administrative research systems as part of the lifecycle of scholarly research and research data. The group promotes standards for metadata and data that support both machine-to- machine and human-to- machine discovery activities.

One of the first tasks for this group was to produce a white paper for the broad research data management community that provides an environmental scan of the systems supporting data discovery today and explores options for the design of a coordinated, national discovery service for research data in Canada. We see this white paper as an invitation to begin discussions with other stakeholders in research data management about the challenges and solutions to data discovery in Canada. This paper will also help direct the Discovery Expert Group in undertaking specific projects within Portage to improve data discovery.

The full white paper is available in both official languages from the Portage website. Update [July 29, 2016]: The French version of this document is now available. 

• Research Data Discovery and the Scholarly Ecosystem in Canada
• Découverte des données de recherche et écosystème du savoir au Canada

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About Portage:
Portage is a national research data management initiative to assist researchers and other research data management stakeholders through a library-based network of expertise on RDM and national platforms for planning, preserving, and discovering research data. Portage is managed by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL).

For more information, please contact:

Eugene Barsky, Chair, Portage Data Discovery Expert Group
eugene.barsky@ubc.ca

Chuck Humphrey, Portage Director, Canadian Association of Research Libraries
chuck.humphrey@ualberta.ca

Source: https://portagenetwork.ca/news/discovery-white-paper/