Data Preservation and Dissemination: a Scientific and Professional Obligation

As part of best practices in project and knowledge management it should be envisaged completion of an experimental research programme securing the acquired results in a form that is complete, easily accessible and updatable with eventual new information. Although this basic principle seems quite logical or even trivial at the start of a project, it turns out that very often and especially in public funded research projects it is not adhered to. Documentation of test results in experimental data reports as well as storage and maintenance of the digital data and of the supporting information are generally seen as a temporary activity tailored to the immediate needs of the project analytical staff requesting data access and retrieval for analysis purposes. Little attention is paid to the potential future use of the data by other experts in the field; this is demonstrated by the limited amount of resources and scarce interest especially under change of management for the collection and storage as well as preservation of the produced information in a systematic and comprehensive way. As consequence, after some years it may become difficult to locate and retrieve data and related information impairing other potential users to take full benefit of the research results. This paper describes the experience in the application of modern information technologies for the management of scientific information acquired in reactor safety experimental programmes with specific reference to experimental data relevant to severe accident research and the exploitation of related web based data storage and retrieval networking opportunities.

ANNUNZIATO Alessandro;  ADDABBO Carmelo; 

2005-12-13

JRC31446

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC31446,