Contact the Center for Data and Visualization Sciences for resources, training, and consultations related to open access to data and data management.
Visit the The Brandaleone Lab for Data and Visualization Services in Bostock Library to use specialized software and meet with data experts.
Open data presumes making publicly available the underlying research materials obtained through the process of scholarly inquiry, and is part of open science/scholarship practices, which also includes open access (OA), open source programming, and open educational resources. Open data may be numeric or qualitative, structured or unstructured, and they may take the form of notebooks, statistical or spatial data tables, audio or visual recordings, photographs or models. The unifying characteristic of these data is that they are openly accessible to everyone and free from copyright, patent, or other restrictions.
Open access to data has a range of potential benefits not only to the research community, but also to the world at large. Open data is increasingly viewed as an important tool in ensuring that scholarly research is repeatable, replicable, and reproducible. Additionally, data that are produced particularly as a result of government-funded research are beginning to be thought of as a common good that should be available to the public without a fee. In response to these changing perceptions, a growing number of scholarly journals and funders are encouraging or requiring some degree of data availability as a condition of publication or funding,
Duke University is firmly committed to the values of openness, transparency, and academic rigor in scholarly research. As a demonstration of this commitment, Duke University Libraries launched a data curation program in early 2017 to help scholars ensure their data are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR), in addition to making them available for the long term.
The Libraries have data curation staff on hand to help Duke community members think about how to best manage data throughout the research lifecycle. When researchers have completed a project, Library curators can help find an appropriate repository through which to make as much of the project’s underlying data as possible as openly available as possible. Although not the only solution for data publication, the Libraries also host the Duke Research Data Repository, where scholars can publish the data associated with their research.
The mission of the Center for Data and Visualization Sciences (CDVS) is to partner with faculty, researchers, and students through consultation, instruction, co-curricular programming, and research assistance at various stages of the research data lifecycle.
CDVS is located within Duke University Libraries and serves Duke University and Duke University Health System. Consultants offer support in:
Visit the CDVS website or contact askdata@duke.edu!
