Research Data Metrics – Where are we now at the University of Helsinki?

There is a growing interest to disseminate and evaluate research data. This has led to an urgent need to develop practices and infrastructure. There are several on-going projects and initiatives targeting to enabling research data metrics, such as project Mildred at the University of Helsinki and Data Citation Roadmap for Finland. I am currently conducting a data metrics survey at the Helsinki University Library, and will present its viewpoints and preliminary results.

Open science movement and funder mandates have raised the profile of sharing research data. Lately researchers themselves have actively promoted the idea that also other research outputs than traditional publications should be considered as acknowledged sources for scientific reward system. Firstly, this is due to promoting science and secondly, due to demonstrating research impact. However, together with this growing interest to disseminate and evaluate research data similarly to research publications, there are obstacles in realizing them.

At this stage it is evident that the University of Helsinki needs to:

• take data management into consideration throughout the research process, not only in parts of it

• understand the dynamic and varied nature of research data

• improve its infrastructure, e.g. data management and data storage services

• develop metadata practices in order to achieve open, linked high-quality metadata and also to enable precise identification.