Opportunities and Challenges of Data Publication: A Case from Purdue

Beginning in 2011, there have been several policy changes directly affecting the management, preservation, and accessibility of publically funded research and resulting research data in the United States. On January 18, 2011 the National Science Foundation (NSF) required data management plans to be submitted with all grant proposals (National Science Foundation, 2013). On February 22, 2013, the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the President of the United States extended a similar requirement to all federal agencies that have a research and development budget of more than $100 million (Holdren, 2013). These requirements illustrate the need for further coordination and management of data as scholarship and traditional scholarship in integrated publishing solutions. The case study presented in this paper will illustrate an early initiative at Purdue University to integrate discrete data publications with traditional scholarly publications through leveraging new and existing repository platforms and services (Zilinski, Scherer, Bullock, Horton, & Matthews). Examination of the case study will involve a discussion of workflow integration between Purdue’s data repository, the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR); its traditional press, the Purdue University Press (PUP); and the institutional repository, Purdue e-Pubs