Due to a new U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) policy requiring researchers to submit a data management plan as part of their funding requests, managing data has become an economic challenge in addition to a technical one, says Michael Norman, director the University of California, San Diego's San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).
"Data management has become an even more challenging discipline than high-performance computing," Norman says. "The question used to be 'what's the essential technology?' but is now 'what's the sustainable cost model?'"
He says the research infrastructure for data-enabled science has been thoroughly discussed at the NSF and has led to new data management sharing policy. "This document works across all the NSF Directorates and finally makes data-enabled science a first-class citizen," Norman says. However, he says researchers will never be able to save all their data, and should focus on saving and sharing only those data that are intellectually valuable, while creating a sustainable business model.
"SDSC, like other data resource centers, has a long-term obligation to steward that data, and maintenance costs are needed to keep that data persistent," Norman says.
From UCSD News (CA)
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