The Digital Curation Centre is an international, consortial organisation established in 2004 whose headquarters are in the Information Services group at the University of Edinburgh.
The Digital Curation Centre is an international, consortial organisation established in 2004 whose headquarters are in the Information Services group at the University of Edinburgh. Its mission is to increase capability and skills in research data management and open science. It receives funding from a wide variety of sources including HEFCE, the European Commission, ERC and the Wellcome Trust, to deliver research, services and consultancy in support of these aims. The DCC provides expert advice to organisations on data management and increasing impact through open research and FAIR data practices.
The DCC monitors developments in research data policy in collaboration with SPARC Europe and has pioneered tools for Data Management Planning. The DCC developed and operates the world-leading service, DMPonline (dmponline.uedin.ac.uk), and provides training to researchers, service providers and funders on its use and customisation. DCC staff have undertaken many user studies to evaluate research data practices and needs. These have informed our own service delivery and tool enhancements, as well as providing tailored recommendations to institutions to develop their RDM services.
The DCC also develops and runs self-supporting training programmes in many areas relevant to research data and FAIR, both through projects such as FOSTER, collaborative enterprises such as the CODATA/RDA Research Data Science Schools, and as stand-alone activity. The DCC is co-leading the training Implementation Network of the GO-FAIR initiative and its Associate Director serves on the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on ‘Turning FAIR data into reality’. The DCC has operated throughout its history as a collaborative organisation that seeks primarily to empower and enable others to do more with research data. It works at national level through organisations such as the Digital Preservation Coalition, at European level through groups such as the Knowledge Exchange, LIBER and SPARC, and internationally through the Research Data Alliance and CODATA, as well as with peer organisations and initiatives such as Portage (Canada), ANDS (Australia) and UC3 (California, USA.) In the FAIR4Health project, the DCC will be responsible for producing the Data Management Plan, identifying cultural barriers to implementing FAIR, co-designing the FAIRification tool, engaging the wider open science community in FAIR and delivering data skills training.
