title: Digital preservation, archives management, format migration, transformation, at scale, normalization
creators: Joao Rocha da Silva Cristina Riberio Joao Correia Lopes
abstract: In a recent scoping study we have inquired into the data management needs of several research groups at the Uni- versity of Porto and concluded that data quality and ease of on-line data manipulation are among the most valued features of a data repository. This paper describes the en- suing approach to data curation, designed to streamline the data depositing process and built on two components: a curation workflow and a data repository. The workflow in- volves a data curator who will assist researchers in provid- ing meaningful descriptions for their data, while a DSpace repository was customised to satisfy common data deposit and exploration requirements. Storing the datasets as XML documents, the repository allows curators to deposit new datasets using Excel spreadsheets as an intermediate for- mat, allowing the data to be queried on-line and the results retrieved in the same format. This dedicated repository pro- vides the grounds for collecting researcher feedback on the curation process.
keywords: ischool toronto canada research data management data repositories dspace extension digital curation