We are the Data Curation Network
As professional data curators, data management experts, data repository administrators, disciplinary scientists and scholars we represent academic institutions and non-profit data repositories that steward research data for future use.
What we do
We strive to build a trusted community-led network of curators advancing open research by making data more ethical, reusable, and understandable.
Get involved
Our Values
Open. We share data curation techniques that are practical, transparent and available to all.
Trusted. We add value to data while maintaining data integrity and upholding the ethical responsibilities of data sharing.
Inclusive. We foster an accessible and welcoming environment to equitably support all participants.
Collaborative. We build an innovative community of practice for data curation.
Empowering. We advocate for data professionals by providing a pipeline for training data curators, promoting data curation practices and enriching capacities for data curation writ large.
Recent blog posts
Strengthening Research Infrastructure: Data Curation + Institutional Repositories
This post was authored by Jen Darragh (Duke University), Shawna Taylor (ARL), and Mikala Narlock (DCN). In 2024, advocacy emerged as a focal point of external DCN activities, with members drawing on years of collaboration and expertise to emphasize the essential role of institutional repositories and professional data curation expertise. From surveying researchers and repository…
Applications open for 2025 NIH and Data Curation Network Workshop Series
The Data Curation Network in partnership with the National Institutes of Health Office of Data Science Strategy is happy to announce a new training series aimed at helping data curators and information professionals in assisting researchers in making data publicly accessible via repositories. The series will include three workshops throughout the spring and summer of…
Get to Know DCN Curator Talya Cooper!
Talya Cooper is the Research Curation Librarian at New York University. Talya was interviewed by Neggin Keshavarizan in October 2024. How did you come to your current position? My first position at NYU was a grant funded position as part of a project called Collaborating on Software Archiving For Institutions. The PI was my now-colleague,…
Driving change and changing our Drive: Migrating from a Google Folder to a Shared Drive
This post was authored by Mikala Narlock, DCN Director. When the DCN was spinning up 9 years ago, our principal investigator created the Google Drive Folder that would grow to be the nervous system of the DCN, tracking grants, curation, workshops, primers, research–you name it, it was likely in our Google Drive Folder.1 The benefits…
The Data Curation Network is hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries.