An Open Source, DDI-based Curation System for Social Science Data

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Posters, Demos and Developer "How-To's"

This presentation describes the development of a curatorial system to support a repository for research data from randomized controlled trials in the social sciences. The Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) at Yale University and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) are partnering with Colectica to develop software that structures the curation workflow, including checking data for confidentiality and completeness, creating preservation formats, and reviewing and verifying code. The software leverages DDI Lifecycle – the standard for data documentation – and will enable a seamless framework for collecting, processing, archiving, and publishing data. This data curation software system combines several off-the-shelf components with a new, open source, Web application that integrates the existing components to create a flexible data pipeline. Default components include Fedora Commons, Colectica Repository, and Drupal, but the software is developed so each of these can be swapped for alternatives. The software is designed to integrate into any repository workflow, and can also be incorporated earlier in the research workflow. This presentation will describe the requirements for the new curatorial workflow tool, the components of the system, how tasks are launched and tracked, and the benefits of building an integrated curatorial system for data, documentation, and code.