Results of Digital Preservation Costs Survey now available

I am pleased to announce that the findings from the Keeping Research Data Safe 2 (“KRDS2) survey of digital preservation cost information are now available on the KRDS2 project webpage.

One of the core aims of the KRDS2 project was to identify potential sources of cost information for preservation of digital research data and to conduct a survey of them. Between September and November 2009 we made an open invitation via email lists and the project blog and project webpage for others to contact us and contribute to the data survey if they had research datasets and associated cost information that they believe may be of interest to the study.

13 survey responses were received: 11 of these were from UK-based collections, and 2 were from mainland Europe. Two further potential contributions from the USA were unfortunately not available in time to be included.

The responses covered a broad area of research including the arts and humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences and research data archives or cultural heritage collections. Each survey response is approximately 6-8 pages in length.

A summary analysis plus individual completed responses to the data survey that provide  more detail, are available.

We have also made the revised versions of the KRDS2 activity model available to download.

We aim to release the KRDS2 report via JISC in March following peer review and final editing. Further supplementary materials from KRDS2 will also be placed on the project webpage in March.

You will also notice that we have recently undertaken a major website re-design and made additions, should you wish to browse other information on the web site.

3 Responses to “Results of Digital Preservation Costs Survey now available”

  1. Elizabeth McAulay on 05 Feb 2010 at 3:54 pm

    Hi there,

    I received notice of this report via a listserv, but I’m curious to see some aggregated analysis of the data. What’s the most expensive account of access? What’s the average expense in access? Is that coming soon?

    What else is on the horizon?

    Thanks for doing these surveys — I’m definitely interested.

  2. Neil on 05 Feb 2010 at 5:52 pm

    hi Elizabeth

    Thanks for the feedback and interest. There is a lot more to come with publication of the final report and additional supplementary materials will appear on the website with supporting extracts from the report itself. The draft final report is currently being edited and will be peer-reviewed later this month. We hope JISC will be able to make it available in March. We will send out a further announcement to the listservs once its out.

    The report will have further detailed analysis of costs from four of our partners in the survey (University of Oxford, the Archaeology Data Service, University of London Computer Centre ( National Digital Archive of Datasets) , and the UK Data Archive).

    In addition we have done more work on analysing benefits alongside costs and there will be two detailed benefits studies from the UK Data Archive and the eCrystals National Crystallographic Service at Southampton University illustrating the benefits framework developed/led by our colleague Brian Lavoie at OCLC Research.

    In future we would really like to do more work on applying the cost model in other services, develop the benefits framework we have started, and see how our approach can be adapted for research data in disciplines whose curation/preservation is centred on the research group rather than data archives and OAIS-like archival institutions. Currently involved in either work in progress or discussions in the USA, UK and Europe which hopefully will help to move some of these forward. Keep an eye on the blog for future updates!

    Neil

  3. Social Software Development on 15 Jun 2010 at 10:14 am

    Request for Available Dataset Information…

    I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…

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