Background

Vast quantities of data are being created by researchers in UK higher education institutions, however few institutions have formal strategies in place for curating these research assets. Moreover there appears to be a lack of awareness as to what data are held and whether they are being managed. If institutions are to realise the full potential value of their data assets through its reuse they must be able to establish quickly and easily an overview of holdings and the policies and practices in place to manage them.

In response to these concerns the JISC issued a call for proposals to develop and implement a Data Audit Framework. A project was funded led by HATII at the University of Glasgow in association with the Digital Curation Centre to produce this. Four implementation projects were also funded to test the toolkit and promote its uptake. These are based at the University of Edinburgh, Imperial College, King’s College and University College London.

HATII is very grateful to the JISC who made this project possible with a grant from its Repositories Programme, and to the Steering Committee and partners based at University of Edinburgh, UKOLN at the University of Bath and King’s College London who have made the project a success.

The Data Audit Framework development team were:

• Prof. Seamus Ross, HATII, University of Glasgow (Principal Investigator)
• Sarah Jones, HATII, University of Glasgow (Project management)
• Brian Aitken, HATII, University of Glasgow (Author of online tool system requirements)
• Patrick McCann, HATII, University of Glasgow (Online tool developer)
• Raivo Ruusalepp, Estonian Business Archives (Methodology development)
• Robin Rice, EDINA, University of Edinburgh (test audits)
• Dr Cuna Ekmekcioglu, University of Edinburgh (test audits)
• Alex Ball, UKOLN, University of Bath (test audits)
• Stephen Grace, King's College London (test audits)
• Dr Mark Hedges, King's College London (online tool testing)

The Data Audit Framework Steering Committee were:

• Martin Lewis, Director of Library Services, University of Sheffield
• Dr Alastair Brown, Head of Computing, MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh
• Toby Bainton, Secretary of SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries)
• Richard Sinnott, e-Science Technical Director, University of Glasgow

Data Asset Framework