The Product and System Specificities of Measuring Curation Impact

Using three datasets archived at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), we describe the creation of a ‘data usage index’ for curation-specific impact assessments. Our work is focused on quantitatively evaluating climate and weather data used in earth and space science research, but we also discuss the application of this approach to other research data contexts. We conclude with some proposed future directions for metric-based work in data curation. International Journal of Digital Curation (2013), 8(2), 223–234. http://dx.doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v8i2.286 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 UKOLN at the University of Bath and is a publication of the Digital Curation Centre. ISSN: 1746-8256. URL: http://www.ijdc.net/ 224 Specificities of Impact doi:10.2218/ijdc.v8i2.286