Show Me The Data: The Pilot UK Research Data Registry

The UK Research Data (Metadata) Registry (UKRDR) pilot project is implementing a prototype registry for the UK’s research data assets, enabling the holdings of subjectbased data centres and institutional data repositories alike to be searched from a single location. The purpose of the prototype is to prove the concept of the registry, and uncover challenges that will need to be addressed if and when the registry is developed into a sustainable service. The prototype is being tested using metadata records harvested from nine UK data centres and the data repositories of nine UK universities. Received 23 October 2013 | Accepted 26 February 2014 Correspondence should be addressed to Alexander Ball, UKOLN Informatics, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY. Email: [email protected] An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 9th International Digital Curation Conference. The International Journal of Digital Curation is an international journal committed to scholarly excellence and dedicated to the advancement of digital curation across a wide range of sectors. The IJDC is published by the University of Edinburgh on behalf of the Digital Curation Centre. ISSN: 1746-8256. URL: http://www.ijdc.net/ Copyright rests with the authors. This work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. For details please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ International Journal of Digital Curation 2014, Vol. 9, Iss. 1, 132–141. 132 http://dx.doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v9i1.307 DOI: 10.2218/ijdc.v9i1.307 doi:10.2218/ijdc.v9i1.307 Alexander Ball et al. | 133