IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2012   5

IASSIST Quarterly

Editor’s notes

Research data in demystified compliance, with 
“glocal” indexing, and archival development

Welcome to this volume 36-2 2012 of the IASSIST 
Quarterly (IQ). This editorial is written in October 2013, so 
you might rightfully wonder what time zone IQ is in. Yes, 
we are truly sorry that there have been hiccups in the 
process. However, the good news is that we have several 
issues in the pipeline being compiled by guest editors. 
With the many efforts of these busy people we hope to 
catch up on the production schedule with these coming 
special issues.

Now, however, we have three articles in this issue with 
investigations emanating from institutions that we term 
as “data archives” or “data libraries”. 

Natascha Schumann and Astrid Recker from the Data 
Archive for the Social Sciences, at the GESIS - Leibniz 
Institute for the Social Sciences in Cologne, are 
demystifying some central issues on data archiving in 
their paper “De-mystifying OAIS compliance: Benefits 
and challenges of mapping the OAIS reference model 
to the GESIS Data Archive”. Papers for the IQ often evolve 
from presentations at conferences, as did this one, being 
updated from the IASSIST 2013 conference session 
“Beyond Bits and Bytes: The Organizational Dimension of 
Digital Preservation.” The authors are exploring the use of 
OAIS (Open Archival Information System) as an abstract 
reference model as it is being mapped to the GESIS data 
archive. “Welcome to the real world!” The authors focus on 
how the OAIS is considered to be a language and as such 
does not present a concrete solution. OAIS has since the 
late 1990s shaped and influenced the digital preservation 
discourse. The GESIS Data Archive followed in the 
footsteps of ICPSR and the UK Data Archive when it tested 
“OAIS compliance”, when investigating the functions of 
the archival information system by mapping processes to 
the OAIS. The investigation presented in the paper will be 
of benefit to others working at data archives and similar 
institutions. By the way, the authors conclude that “OAIS 
compliance” is not simply a Yes/No question. Compliance 
is complicated!

Also from GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences 
- comes the next paper “Thesaurus-Based Indexing of 
Research Data in the Social Sciences: Opportunities 
and Difficulties of Internationalization Efforts” by Katrin 
Baum and Andreas Oskar Kempf. Internationalization 
and standardization are areas supported and enhanced 
by IASSIST. The authors cite the Data Documentation 
Initiative (DDI) as an example of an international 
standard for describing data, facilitating international 
data exchange. Before data can be exchanged it has to 
be identified. The authors are investigating international 
indexing which enhances the precision of searches for 
data materials. The paper highlights some international 
organizations offering support for indexing, for example 
through descriptions in the “European Language Social 
Science Thesaurus” (ELSST) and the “Topic Classification” 
used by the member organizations of CESSDA (European 

data archives). International indexing and local indexing 
both have their pros and cons. The paper is proposing 
a “glocal” solution that combines and integrates positive 
contributions from both types of indexing. 
 
The last paper “Differences among Faculty Ranks in Views 
on Research Data Management” is research carried out by 
Katherine G. Akers and Jennifer Doty when they worked 
in e-Science and data management at Emory University 
Libraries. Katherine G. Akers now works as a postdoc 
at the University of Michigan Libraries. The authors 
investigated how faculty researchers manage their data 
during and after their research projects, and their views on 
data sharing and preservation. The pragmatic purpose is 
for the libraries to develop research data services tailored 
to their specific needs. Researchers’ age and amount of 
experience are often thought to be important factors, 
but other studies have not shown this conclusively. This 
research found that senior faculty stated more often 
that sharing their research data requires too much time 
and effort. I suggest that this gives data archives further 
incentive to continue to improve the ease of depositing 
research data.

Articles for the IASSIST Quarterly are always very welcome. 
They can be papers from IASSIST conferences or other 
conferences and workshops, from local presentations 
or papers especially written for the IQ. Authors are 
permitted “deep links” where you link directly to your 
paper published in the IQ. Chairing a conference session 
with the purpose of aggregating and integrating papers 
for a special issue IQ is also much appreciated as the 
information reaches many more people than the session 
participants, and will be readily available on the IASSIST 
website at http://www.iassistdata.org. 

Authors are very welcome to take a look at the 
instructions and layout: 
http://iassistdata.org/iq/instructions-authors. 

Authors can also contact me via e-mail: kbr@sam.sdu.dk. 
Should you be interested in compiling a special issue for 
the IQ as guest editor(s) I will also be delighted to hear 
from you.

Karsten Boye Rasmussen    
October 2013     
Editor