Seeding the Commons Project

This project is a component of the DataWise project.

Project Overview

In 2008 the Federal Department of Industry, Innovation, Science & Research (DIISR) entered into an initial agreement with Monash University that provided funding to establish the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). Subsequently, in 2009 DIISR entered into an additional agreement with Monash University that provides access to funds from the Education Investment Fund (EIF). The amount provided was $48 million over two years. This funding has been provided to conduct a “project to create and develop an Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) infrastructure”. In order to create the required ARDC infrastructure Monash University through ANDS will subcontract the necessary work to suitably qualified organizations that will develop and produce the required infrastructure. Seeding the Commons projects create infrastructure within institutions to collect and transform metadata about collections, then publish it to the Research Data Australia (RDA).

UOW Project details

The project will run for 12 months commencing in July 2010. The project is being managed by the Research Services Office.

This project has the following key aims:

• To identify and describe research data collections at the University of Wollongong.  The descriptions will be stored on site in a metadata store and harvested into RDA.
• To develop university wide data management procedures relevant to UOW. This will be done in consultation with the established Research Project Data working Group.
• Capture metadata for approximately 50% of identified research data generated from Australian Competitive Grants (ACG) from 2005-2010 where datasets exist. There are 404 successful ACGs with potential data collections. Part of this project is to find where datasets exist. 
• Develop internal procedures for research data management
• Identification of important historical datasets that may otherwise be lost or inadvertently destroyed.
• Opportunity for researchers to re-use data sets if appropriate
• Diminished exposure to risk by storing supporting evidence for any research assertions made.
• Exposure and promotion of UOW research through the searchability of RDA
• A more streamlined approach to research project data management that ensures a sound return on research investment.
• Discovery and possible re-use of University of Wollongong research data collections by outside researchers via RDA.
• Research citations increase when a research data is in existence.

Benefits of the project

• Identification of important historical datasets that may otherwise be lost or inadvertently destroyed.
• Opportunity for researchers to re-use data sets if appropriate
• Diminished exposure to risk by storing supporting evidence for any research assertions made.
• Exposure and promotion of UOW research through the searchability of the data commons
• A more streamlined approach to research project data management that ensures a sound return on research investment.
• Discovery and possible re-use of University of Wollongong research data collections by outside researchers via RDA.
• Research citations increase when a research data is in existence.

Get Involved!

The project team are very keen to speak to researchers about their research datasets. If you have research data and you would like to speak to someone about this project please contact Carolyn and Elaine. You can find our contact details here <Contacts>

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