Curation Guidelines¶

Below you will find guidelines on how research data support at DataverseNO partner institutions are meant to curate their collections in DataverseNO. In case you need additional help or have questions about curation, please contact the support services at your institution. If you want to test how curation works in DataverseNO, you can do this in our sandbox at demo.dataverse.no. Contact us at support@dataverse.no if you need curator access to demo.dataverse.no.

Curation of datasets¶

GENERAL¶

When a user has created a dataset and submitted it for review, the curator(s) of the collection in question are automatically noticed by email. As a curator, you log into DataverseNO and click on your username in the upper right corner, and then click on Notifications.

In the Notifications tab, search for the correct message, i.e. the message stating that the dataset in question has been submitted for review. Click on the dataset link.

The link takes you to the landing page of the dataset, and you are now ready to curate it.

The first thing you as a curator should check is whether the contents and the author(s) of the dataset meet the requirements in the DataverseNO Accession Policy. Here is a short summary of the most important points:

• At least one of the authors of the dataset is or has been affiliated with the partner institution in question. Other rules may apply for special collections.
• The dataset must be suitable for open access publication.

You should also check if the dataset is created in the right collection (= (sub)dataverse). For a 'common' user from a DataverseNO partner institution (e.g. UiT), this will be the institutional collection for that institution (e.g. the UiT collection). But for other users, the right collection may be a special collection. For a linguist, e.g., the right collection will usually be TROLLing. If a dataset is created in the wrong collection, you curate the dataset in the usual way (see below), but after the dataset has been published, you should inform support@dataverse.no about which collection the dataset has to be moved to.

The curation of a dataset is essentially about ensuring that dataset is structured and documented according to best practice, as described in the Deposit Guidelines (see the menu item Deposit). There are four main areas to be reviewed: files, metadata, terms, and versions. You get to these areas by clicking the corresponding tabs on the landing page, i.e. Files, Metadata, Terms, and Versions.

As of today, the notice telling the curator(s) that a new dataset has been submitted for review does not contain any information about whether this is a new dataset or a new version of a previously published dataset. Therefore, it is a good idea to start curating by looking at the versions tab. Here you will immediately see whether the dataset is entirely new, or whether it is a new version of an existing dataset. In the latter case, the versions tab will also tell you what changes that have been made since the previous version, and you then only have to review these changes. Read more about versioning in the section New version of a published dataset below.

If you are dealing with a new dataset, you should start curating by having a look at the metadata. They will give you an overview of what the dataset is about.

Note! If it is obvious that the depositor has not consulted the Deposit Guidelines (e.g. if there is no ReadMe file), it might be just as well not to curate the dataset yet, but rather return it to the depositor (Return to Author), and send him/her an email asking him/her to consult the Deposit Guidelines and re-submit the dataset for review once it is organized and documented in line with the guidelines.

Combined with the automatically assigned publication status labels, Curation Labels may be used to indicate different curation statuses of datasets.