The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) makes Australia’s research data assets more valuable for researchers, research institutions and the nation. ARDC’s Research Data Australia is a web-based discovery service that helps you find, access, and reuse data for research from Australian research organisations, government agencies, and cultural institutions. Research Data Australia does not store the data itself but provide descriptions of, and links to, the data from data publishing partners and contributors.
Purpose
The strategic intent of Research Data Australia is to provide a wide-ranging and informative picture of the research data collections of the Australian research, innovation, and public sector. The Research Data Australia portal provides the richest possible context to enable researchers to discover, appraise, and understand how to access and re-use Australian research data. For these reasons, descriptions of data collections provided to ARDC for inclusion in Research Data Australia should be complete, contain rich contextual connections, and quality content. For contributors, Research Data Australia is also an opportunity to raise the profile and relevance of their organisation by promoting use and re-use of data, driving up citation and references to their data, and forging new collaborative ties.
Scope
This policy covers issues of metadata completeness, rich contextual connections, and quality content. This policy is not meant to cover issues of currency, accuracy, or appropriateness. Those issues are addressed in the Research Data Australia Collection Description Integrity Policy.
Definitions
For the purpose of this policy, the following definitions apply:
Completeness: the collection description contains some information on all required metadata elements and on as many optional elements as practical.
Richly connected: the collection description is well-connected to information about research outputs, research projects, research organisations, researchers, and research infrastructure.
Quality: the collection description is well-written, informative, and detailed enough to support discovery and evaluation for use, outside the original context.
Principles
The ARDC reserves the right not to publish collection descriptions to Research Data Australia that don’t meet a minimum quality threshold. ARDC expects descriptions to be complete, richly connected, and of sufficient quality to enable researchers to discover, appraise, and understand how to access and re-use data. For further guidance, see Metadata for Impact: make RIF-CS work for you.
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