Managing multidisciplinary research data Extending DSpace to enable long-term preservation of tabular datasets

In a recent scoping study we have inquired into the data management needs of several research groups at the University of Porto and concluded that data quality and ease of on-line data manipulation are among the most valued features of a data repository. This paper describes the ensuing approach to data curation, designed to streamline the data depositing process and built on two components: a curation workflow and a data repository. The workflow involves a data curator who will assist researchers in providing meaningful descriptions for their data, while a DSpace repository was customised to satisfy common data deposit and exploration requirements. Storing the datasets as XML documents, the repository allows curators to deposit new datasets using Excel spreadsheets as an intermediate format, allowing the data to be queried on-line and the results retrieved in the same format. This dedicated repository provides the grounds for collecting researcher feedback on the curation process.