Introduction

ANDS and the Australian Research Data Commons

ANDS provides avenues for researchers and research organisations to participate in the Australian Research Data Commons by publicising the existence of their research data collections. By describing and publicising their data, participants increase the profile of their organisation, drive references to their work and enjoy a 'collaborative advantage' by forging ties with similar research groups, similar research projects and similar research data sets.

ANDS partners with research organisations around Australia to improve accessibility to information about research data collections. Descriptions of data collections registered with ANDS are disseminated through the ANDS discovery portal Research Data Australia and through a number of other portals nationally and internationally.

For the purposes of describing collections, ANDS has adopted the information model from the ISO 2146 Registry Services for Libraries and Related Organisations standard. This information model is based on research collections, people, organisations, research activities and services. The real value of this model is in the relationships that can be created between these entities to create a rich mesh of information about research. We want to enable people to traverse this information mesh to answer questions such as: Who worked on this research data? What other datasets did they work on? Which organisation sponsored the research? What project was involved? What other research data was produced by that project? How can I access the collection? What conclusions were published from this data?

Information for the commons

Information that can be held about data can be grouped into four categories.

The first is information for discovery, and is primarily held at the level of a collection. This consists of the range of pieces of information that will assist in the discovery of the collection.

The second is information for determination of value (also primarily at collection level). This includes information such as the name of the researcher, institution or funding program that might help a potential user to decide whether they want to access the data.

The third is information for access that might be a direct link to the data objects (stored elsewhere, such as on national and institutional data stores), both at collection and possibly object level, or contact details for where to source the data.

The fourth kind of information is information for re-use, and will include things like reading scales, field names, variables, calibration settings that are needed in order to effectively re-use the data. This will mostly be at object level rather than collection level, and therefore more effectively managed in local metadata stores.

For the automated exchange of this information between research organisations and ANDS, ANDS uses an XML format, the Registry Interchange Format-Collections and Services (RIF-CS) which is based on ISO 2146.

ANDS applies a number of structural and content rules about information being supplied to the ANDS Collections Registry in order to ensure its validity and broad fitness for purpose. Some information fields must be supplied. Completing these required fields is necessary but not sufficient to create a quality set of information about research data collections. ANDS recommends that you supply a further set of information, tailored to answering the questions that potential users, collaborators, and funders might want to know about your organisation's research data assets.

Purpose of this guide

This guide is a reference tool for data source administrators and content providers who need to understand the semantic content of RIF-CS Schema documents for mapping or planning purposes.

It is a comprehensive guide that will help professional intermediaries to provide quality data and metadata to the ANDS Collections Registry for exposure in the Research Data Australia portal. Professional intermediaries include research data stewards and data management professionals. They have roles in supporting both researchers and institutional repositories, and in the sharing of data and metadata beyond the institution.

This guide describes the meaning and purpose of the information collected for the ANDS Collections Registry. It also explains how to use the RIF-CS Schema to share that information. This document should not be regarded as a specification.

The information collected describes concepts from the research domain, such as people and organisations engaged in research, project activities, the outputs of research such as datasets, and services that support research. These descriptions are sourced from metadata stores or other digital sources. The ANDS Collections Registry complements Australian Research Online (ARO). Australian Research Online focuses on publications, while the ANDS Collections Registry focuses on datasets or other research outputs and the parties, activities and services that are related to them.

 

Diagram: Information supply to the ANDS Collections Registry.

Publish My Data contributors

Although the focus of this guide is the automated exchange of metadata using harvesting protocols, some of the concepts described are also relevant to the Publish My Data service.
Publish My Data is a self service option that allows Australian researchers to contribute information to the ANDS Collections Registry. It uses a subset of the information elements available in the ANDS Collections Registry. Publish My Data users should refer to the ANDS Guide to Publish My Data and to the 'Help' function provided within Publish My Data for information specific to that service.

 

Date	Change history
April 2010	Consultation draft
26 October 2010	First web publication

 

 

 

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