Researcher Approved: a Multi-institutional Survey of Depositors to Six Academic Data Repositories

The Data Curation Network (DCN) is a collaborative network of curators advancing open research by making data more ethical, reusable, and understandable. Institutional members participate in and learn from a community of expert data curators and curate data via a cross-institutional shared staffing model. This enables institutions to submit data sets to the network when they are outside of our local expertise or when local curators are busy or absent. The collaborative network model benefits our curators; however we questioned whether there is an impact on depositors. In order to evaluate end user satisfaction with data curation services, we surveyed recent depositors over the past year and a half, regardless of whether they received curation locally or from DCN curators. The result was overwhelmingly positive: we enjoyed a high response rate and consistently laudatory feedback including many free-text responses testifying to the value of curation. In times of tight budgets and constricting services, it is good to have researcher testimonials and survey data to indicate the added value of curatorial review to the data sharing process, and evidence that a collaborative network of data curators benefits us all.