Data Sharing and Discovery: What Librarians Need to Know

Drawing from the literatures of science, scholarly communication, and librarianship, this review paper describes what librarians need to know about how scientists manage and share their data. It is intended to help librarians become more engaged and integral partners in research and education. Scientific data repositories, journal data deposition policies, and the development of persistent linking between scholarly publications and data sets, have made data more accessible. However, deposition and sharing practices still vary among researchers, journal publishers, data repositories, information providers, and universities. Understanding the dynamic relationships between these stakeholders is critical to providing relevant support to researchers and students in the sciences. Librarians need to develop skills that bridge traditional liaison work with the increasingly data-driven demands of scientific research, so that we can support researchers with their data management needs and help users discover data across myriad collections and resources.