Appropriate Sharing
The term “appropriate” is used to signal that public access to Federally-funded research results and data should be maximized in a manner that protects confidentiality, privacy, business confidential information, and security, avoids negative impact on intellectual property rights, innovation, program and operational improvements, and U.S. competitiveness, and preserves the balance between the relative value of long-term preservation and access and the associated cost and administrative burden.
Data Preservation
Data preservation means providing for the usability of data beyond the lifetime of the research activity that generated them.
Data Sharing
Data sharing means making data available to people other than those who have generated them. Examples of data sharing range from bilateral communications with colleagues, to providing free, unrestricted access to the public through, for example, a web-based platform.
Digital Scientific Data
The term digital data encompasses a wide variety of information stored in digital form including: experimental, observational, and simulation data; codes, software and algorithms; text; numeric information; images; video; audio; and associated metadata. It also encompasses information in a variety of different forms including raw, processed, and analyzed data, published and archived data. Digital scientific data are scientific data that can be stored digitally and accessed electronically.
The term scientific data includes the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings. Such scientific data do not include laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, case report forms, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer-reviews, communications with colleagues, or physical objects and materials, such as laboratory specimens, artifacts, or field notes. The definition of “scientific data” is similar to but broader than the term “research data” defined by 2 CFR 200.315 (e) and 45 CFR 75.322 (e):
Research data means the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings. Research data does not include any of the following:
(i) Preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer reviews, or communications with colleagues. This “recorded” material excludes physical objects (for example, laboratory samples).
(ii) Trade secrets, commercial information, materials necessary to be held confidential by a researcher until they are published, or similar information which is protected under law; and
(iii) Personnel, medical, and other personally identifiable information that, if disclosed, would constitute an invasion of personal privacy. Information that could identify a particular person in a research study is not considered research data.
Persistent Identifier/Digital Identifier
A digital identifier that is globally unique, persistent, machine resolvable and processable, and has an associated metadata schema. Generally, a long-lasting, managed, and registered unique digital reference (often in the form of a URL) to a research object that can be represented or described online. PIDs are often associated with people, organizations, funding, and STI. Common PIDs include ORCID iDs (for people), ROR IDs (for organizations), and DOIs (for R&D outputs and awards).
Unclassified and Otherwise Unrestricted
Unclassified and Otherwise Unrestricted refers generally to information that is not exempt from disclosure under one or more of the exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which includes Export Control, proprietary information, information specifically exempted from disclosure by statute, and National Security classified information.
Validation and Replication
In the context of DMSPs, validation and replication are means to support, corroborate, verify, or otherwise determine the legitimacy of the research findings. Validation or replication of research findings could be accomplished by reproducing the original experiment or analyses; comparing and contrasting the results against those of a new experiment or analyses; or by some other means.