What business are we in?Data-centric research, service

requirements and national responses

Data Keynote, NEIC 2013Dr Andrew Treloar

Australian National Data Service

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Overview

• What business are we really in?• Service requirements• Infrastructure responses• Research Data Alliance• Conclusions

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What Business are you in?

Theodore Levitt, The Changing Character of Capitalism, Harvard Business Review, July–August 1956

“The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented....”

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We are all in the Data business!

• Researchers– with some exceptions

• Research infrastructure providers– with no exceptions

• But what about publications?

LHC output from 2009-2013 = 100PB

(www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/february-2013/achievement-unlocked-100-petabytes-of-

data)

Journal Literature size in context…

@atreloar

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Data-centric view of research data re-use

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eResearch infrastructure requirements

• Create/Capture– automated with capture of associated

metadata

• Store– with appropriate levels of preservation

• Describe– information for discovery, determination

of value, access, re-use

• Identify– indirection operator to reduce

brittleness

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eResearch infrastructure requirements

• Register– in institutional/national/discipline

registries

• Discover– via general or specialised search

interfaces

• Access– with appropriate levels of control,

including humans

• Exploit– by re-analysis or combination

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I come from a land downunder…

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AU• 6 States• 2 Territories• 2 islands• 23M people

NZ• 2 islands• 4.5M people

You come from the frozen North…

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Nordic Countries• 5 Countries• 4 Territories• So many islands• 26M people

And yet there are some similarities

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• Australia+NZ – 27.5M people

• Scandinavia – 26M people

Australian National Data Service An initiative of the Australian Government being

conducted as part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy ($A24M) and the Super Science Initiative ($A48M)

A collaboration between Monash University, the Australian National University and CSIRO

30 staff, funded to mid 2015 More researchers re-using more data more often Data as a first-class object

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ANDS enables transformation of:Data that are:

UnmanagedDisconnectedInvisibleSingle use

To Structured Collections that are:ManagedConnectedFindableReusable

so that Australian researchers can easily publish, discover, access and use/re-use research data.

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Data-centric view of research data re-use

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ANDS activities/services Plan

Data management planning tools and resources (N) Create/Capture

69 Data Capture projects at 23 universities Store

working closely with national Research Data Storage Infrastructure (N) Describe

25 institutional Metadata Stores projects National Vocabulary Services (N)

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Identify (N) DataCite DOIs

Register (N) Repository Interchange Format – Collections and Services

(RIF-CS) – based on ISO2146:2010 Discover (N)

Research Data Australia

ANDS activities/services

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ANDS activities/services

Access enforced by underlying data stores

Exploit 25 institutionally-focussed projects to demonstrate value of

combining data Advocate (N)

Be the voice for data Work with Government and Research Funders to change

settings in favour of data sharing

26Research Data Alliance

The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is a new international

organization (driven now by EC, US, AU, more soon) forming to

facilitate specific, short-term efforts that accelerate the sharing and

exchange of research data

Unofficial motto: rough consensus and exchanged data

Working groups will run over 12-18 months to produce

Adopted standards

Deployed infrastructure

Adopted policy

Implemented best practice, etc.

Second Plenary in Washington DC, September 16-18

Slide by Fran Berman

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Data Type Registries

Data Foundation and

Terminology

Practical Policy

PID Information Types

Metadata Standards WG

Community Capability Model

Working Group on Data Citation:

Making Data Citable

Structural Biology Defining Urban Data Exchange for

Science Marine Data Harmonization Repository Audit and Certification Big Data Analytics Metadata Standards Directory Interest

Group (MSDIG) The Engagement Group Legal Interoperability Preservation e-Infrastructure UPC Code for Data Publishing Data Data in Context Citation of Dynamic Data Agricultural Data Interoperability

Working Groups Interest Groups

Research Data Alliance

Slide by Fran Berman

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Conclusion

• We are all in the data business• Researchers need data services from

their infrastructure providers• A number of services can best be

provided at national or regional level• Research Data Alliance is working to

develop international solutions for data interoperability – join us!

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Questions?

@atreloar

ands.org.au

rd-alliance.org