Introduction

On May 22, 2012 at the University of North Texas, a group of technologists and librarians, scholars and researchers, university administrators, and other stakeholders gathered to discuss and articulate best practices and emerging trends in research data management.  This declaration bridges the converging interests of these stakeholders and promotes collaboration, transparency, and accountability across organizational and disciplinary boundaries.

Declarations

Open access to research data is critical for advancing science, scholarship, and society.

Research data, when repurposed, has an accretive value.

Publicly funded research should be publicly available for public good.

Transparency in research is essential to sustain the public trust.

The validation of research data by the peer community is an essential function of the responsible conduct of research.

Managing research data is the responsibility of a broad community of stakeholders including researchers, funders, institutions, libraries, archivists, and the public.

Principles

1. Open access to research data benefits society, and facilitates decision making for public policy.
2. Publicly available research data helps promote a more cost-effective and efficient research environment by reducing redundancy of efforts.
3. Access to research data ensures transparency in the deployment of public funds for research and helps safeguard public good will toward research.
4. Open access to research data facilitates validation of research results, allows data to be improved by identifying errors, and enables the reuse and analysis of legacy data using new techniques developed through advances and changing perceptions.
5. Funding entities should support reliable long-term access to research data as a component of research grants due to the benefits that accrue from the availability of research data.
6. Data preservation should involve sufficient identifying characteristics and descriptive information so that others besides the data producer can use and analyze the data.
7. Data should be made available in a timely manner; neither too soon to ensure that researchers to benefit from their labor, nor too late to allow for verification of the results.
8. A reasonable plan for the disposition of research data should be established as part of data management planning, rather than arbitrarily claiming the need for preservation in perpetuity.
9. Open access to research data should be a central goal of the lifecycle approach to data management, with consideration given at each stage of the data lifecycle to what metadata, data architecture, and infrastructure will be necessary to support data discoverability, accessibility, and long-term stewardship.
10. The costs of cyberinfrastructure should be distributed among the stakeholders – including researchers, agencies, and institutions – in a way that supports a long-term strategy for research data acquisition, collection, preservation, and access.
11. The academy should adapt existing frameworks for tenure and promotion, and merit-based incentives to account for alternative forms of publication and research output including data papers, public data sets, and digital products. Value inheres in data as a standalone research output.
12. The principles of open access should not be in conflict with the intellectual property rights of researchers, and a culture of citation and acknowledgement should be cultivated rigorously and conscientiously among all practitioners.
13. Open access should not compromise the confidentiality of research subjects, and will comply with principles of data security defined by HIPAA, FERPA, and other privacy guidelines.

Intentions

In our professional interactions at meetings, on review panels, conferences, teaching, etc. we will advocate the following positions:

1. A culture of openness in research.
2. A federated model of archiving data to enable discoverability, transparency, and open access.
3. A robust and sustainable funding regime for research data management infrastructure (technical, policy, and human resources).
4. The development and adoption of metadata standards for research data.
5. Long-term access to data that supports published research outputs.
6. Support for researchers in negotiations with publishers to allow open access to research in repositories.
7. Recognition of researchers’ intellectual property in data and scholarly research outputs.

Participants

• Jonathan Crabtree, Assistant Director for Archives and Information Technology, H.W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Stephen Griffin, Professor in Cyberscholarship, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
• Michael Greenlee, Reference, Instruction, and Web Services Librarian, University of Tulsa
• José-Marie Griffiths, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Bryant University; National Science Board
• Martin Halbert, Dean of Libraries, University of North Texas
• Michael Hulsey, Technical Applications Specialist, Immunocytometry Systems Group, BD Biosciences
• James H. Kennedy, Regents Professor and Director, Elm Fork Education Center and Natural Heritage Museum, Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Texas
• Spencer D. C. Keralis, Director for Digital Scholarship, University of North Texas
• John Kunze, Associate Director, University of California Curation Center
• William E. Moen, Associate Dean for Research, College of Information, University of North Texas
• Allen Renear, Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Kenneth W. Sewell, Associate Vice President for Research, University of North Texas
• Brian E. C. Schottlaender, The Audrey Geisel University Librarian, University of California – San Diego
• Denise Perry-Simmons, Assistant Vice President, Research Development, University of North Texas
• Shannon Stark, Strategic Projects Librarian, University of North Texas
• Carly Strasser, Project Manager, Data Curation for Excel, California Digital Library
• Rene Tanner, Life Sciences Librarian, Arizona State University

Co-Signers (view on world map)

• Sian Brannon, Assistant Dean for Collection Management, University of North Texas Libraries
• Bryan Sinclair, Associate Dean, Public Services, University Library, Georgia State University
• Daniel Gelaw Alemneh, Digital Curator, University of North Texas Libraries
• Karen Goss, Graduation Coordinator, Toulouse Graduate School, University of North Texas
• Dr. Nirmala Gunapala, Science Librarian and Assistant Professor, Library, New Mexico State University
• Dr. Jeff M. Allen, Professor, Department of Learning Technologies, Center for Knowledge Solutions, University of North Texas
• Sheila Corrall, Professor and Chair, Library & Information Sciences Program, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
• Ronald L. Larsen, Dean and Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
• Jill Kleister, Graduate Reader, Toulouse Graduate School, University of North Texas
• Jordon Andrade, E-Science Librarian, Dirac Science Library, The Florida State University
• Melissa G. Gonzales, Archivist for University, Labor and Political Collections, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington
• Michael Shanahan, Professor, Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Peter Rogers, Information Literacy and Social Sciences Librarian, Colgate University Libraries, Colgate University
• David Shotton, Emeritus Reader, Research Data Management and Semantic Publishing, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
• Mercè Crosas, Director of Product Development, Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), Harvard University
• Matthew Woollard, Director, UK Data Archive, University of Essex
• Erik Hetzner, Developer, UC3, California Digital Library
• Laurent Romary, Directeur de Recherche, Inria
• Peter Murray-Rust, Reader Emeritus, Unilver Centre for Molecular Sciences Informatics, University of Cambridge
• Jakes Rawlinson, Chief Medical Officer/Lecturer, Public Health Medicine, University of Limpopo
• Janez Štebe, Head, ADP, University of Ljubljana
• Pat Loria, Research Librarian, Library Services, University of Southern Queensland
• Tyler Curtain, Associate Professor, English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Leonie Hayes, Research Support Services Manager, Library, The University of Auckland
• Mark Hahnel, Former Researcher, NHLI, Imperial College London
• Mike Taylor, Research Associate, Earth Sciences, University of Bristol
• Ernesto Priego, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, University College London
• Ethan White, Associate Professor, Biology, Utah State University
• Mark Anderson, Teacher, ELA Special Education 5-9, Jonas Bronck Academy
• Ignasi Bartomeus, Postdoc, Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
• Lourdes Pérez González, Librarian, Biblioteca Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela - Galiza
• Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor, Physics, Indiana University
• Laurie Goodman, Editor-in-Chief, Publishing, GigaScience
• Clarisse Pais, Librarian Coordinator, Servicos de Documentacao e Bibliotecas do IPB, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança
• Aldo Velazquez, Associate Professor, IT Teaching Programme, Instituto Normal de Educación Técnica - Uruguay
• Ben Morris, Graduate Student, Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Katherine Skinner, Executive Director, Educopia Institute
• Karim B. Boughida, Associate University Librarian, George Washington Libraries, George Washington University
• Carol Hixson, Dean of Library, Nelson Poynter Memorial Library, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg
• Irina Radchenko, Associate Professor, Research and Educational Center of Semantic Technology, Higher School of Economics
• Sridhar Gutam, Crop Production, Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture
• Maristella Feustle, Musical Special Collections Library, Music Library, University of North Texas
• Laura Waugh, Repository Librarian for Scholarly Works, Library, University of North Texas
• Richard W Clement, Dean of Libraries, Utah State University
• Joy Nelson, Director of Migrations, ByWater Solutions
• Plato L. Smith II, Technical & Paraprofessional, Florida A&M University
• Cunera Buys, e-science librarian, Library, Northwestern University
• Remedios Melero, Researcher, Information science, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
• Fernanda Peset, Professor, DCADHA, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
• Fabiano Couto Corrêa da Silva, Professor, Instituto Ciências Humanas e da Informação, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande (BRASIL)
• Davide Nunes, PhD Student, Computer Science, University of Lisbon / Portugal
• Aaron W Dobbs, Scholarly Communications & eResource Development Librarian, Ezra Lehman Memorial Library, Shippensburg University oif Pennsylvania
• Richard D. Morey, Dr., Psychology, University of Groningen
• Ron Joslin, Librarian, DeWitt Wallace Library, Macalester College
• Sandro Von Matter, Plant-Animal Mutualistic Networks Researcher, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro - Brazilian Citizen Science Society
• Jorge Hernán Ramírez, Professor, Physiological Sciences & Pharmacology, Universidad del Valle
• Dunlap, James Blaine, Moving Image Archivist, Motion History Lab
• Trevor Riley, Engineering and Emerging Technologies Librarian, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University
• Christopher Cox, Dean, Library Services, University of Northern Iowa

 

The Denton Declaration: An Open Data Manifesto by Spencer D. C. Keralis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.