The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) is delighted to announce the release of a new Implementation Guide to using the Data Audit/Asset Framework (DAF). The guide collates lessons learned during the DAF pilot studies undertaken in 2008-2009, and includes practical usage tips, sample questionnaires and interview frameworks.

The guide is now available from both the DCC and DAF websites:

In the recent Federal budget ANDS was allocated $48 million from the Education Investment Fund (EIF) to create and develop an Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) research infrastructure. Over the last few months ANDS has been consulting with major stakeholders across the sector on the final form that this project will take.

The consultation process was an initiative of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIIDR). DIISR convened and chaired the meetings, which were held in every state and territory.

On the basis of feedback received

You can download the whole book, or individual sections or subsections. The book, edited by Tony Hey, Stewart Tansley and Kirstin Tolle, is being released in conjunction with the Microsoft E-science meeting currently being held at Carnegie-Mellon University.
The book is dedicated to the memory of Jim Gray and explores his intellectual legacy in Earth and Environment, Health and Well Being, Scientific Infrastructure, and Scholarly Communication. Many of the chapters are by authors well-known within the CNI community, particularly in the Scholarly Communications section, which includes contributions by Timo Hanny, Paul Ginsparg, Herbert Van de Somple and Carl Lagoze; I also had the opportunity to contribute a chapter for this section. I would urge CNI-announce readers to at least browse beyond the Scholarly Communications section; there are a number of important chapters on broader developments in e-science that I think will be of interest. There’s also a short interview wtih Tony Hey about the book at

Rensselaer Researchers to Create Semantic Web Platforms for Massive Scientific Collaboration
The Semantic Web technology being creating in the Tetherless World Research Constellation will allow scientists, educators, and people around the world to access data on a variety of topics all in one place, bringing together scientific data in unprecedented ways. Represented here are just some of the areas that would intersect during a search for data on the Earth’s atmosphere. Credit: Rensselaer/Peter Fox and Deborah McGuinness.

Semantic technology will bring together the data of scientists, teachers, and even the general public

Web scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will use the World Wide Web to compile and share scientific data on an unprecedented scale. Their goal is to hasten scientific discovery and innovation by enabling rapid and easy collaboration between scientists, educators, students, policy makers, and even “citizen scientists” around the world via the Web……

source: resource shelf (such a great resource)

This guide is intended for eResearch infrastructure support providers and researchers. It is not so much a guide to how to cite data, but a guide to the issues around it, and activities underway to change the culture around data citation in order to support improved data management and sharing.

from ANDS

Sharing data is good. But sharing your own data? That can get complicated. As two research communities who held meetings in May on the issue report their proposals to promote data sharing in biology, a special issue of Nature examines the cultural and technical hurdles that can get in the way of good intentions.

A Nature special article