Data Curation for Quality Reproducibility

Prompted by initiatives such as the TOP Guidelines, the scientific community has restored its focus on the replication standard. Defined 20 years earlier by Gary King (1995) in his seminal article, "Replication, Replication," "the replication starndard holds that sufficient information exists with which to understand, evaluate, and build upon a prior work if a third party could replicate the results without any additional information from the author" (p. 444).For data curators, the replication standard should also hold that dataset files, programming code, codebooks, and all other materials that enhance interpretation and reuse of the data are stored in a trustworthy repository where files are normalized to sustainable formats and described using standard metadata. In addition, verification of replication materials to ensure that a third-party user can reproduce the tables and figures presented in published articles gives further assurances as to the reliability of data housed in repositories. These addenda extend and operationalize King's replication standard by establishing data curation processes that uphold the "gold standard" of data quality and reproducibility.Panelists will offer insights into the data curator's role in defining and supporting concepts of data quality as they uphold the replication standard. Each of the panelists will describe their unique experiences working with journal editors and authors as well as ways in which panelists have been rethinking, refining, and retooling data curation roles and processes to support and promote data quality and research reproducibility