Consolidating Research Data Management Infrastructure: Towards Sustainable Digital Scholarship

Abstract

The sustainability of digital research outputs, particularly in the humanities where these frequently comprise archives of digital cultural heritage material, has always offered a challenge to the researchers and institutions who have responsibility for them. The amount of upfront care, effort and funding that goes into developing a research project during the active (and funded) research phase is rarely replicated within the post-project maintenance and curation of the delivered digital assets or archives. What often defines the sustainability of a research project and its archive is a combination of research method and expected life span for the digital collection. Innovation in research data design is often at the expense of its longevity. But this does not need to be so. The trade-off between longevity and functionality is a false dichotomy. Yet what is clear is that care and consideration in planning the research data storage or archive for a project can make a big difference. A data management plan that meets grant funder requirements is asked for many research projects, but is more than simply a funding document. Good research data management ensures outputs are available online for years to come, and available for future research and innovation. This paper offers a practical insight to the methods being employed at the University of Oxford to support Digital Humanities scholars (and beyond) safeguard their digital legacy for future generations.