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.

CollaborativeWe 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

DCN Response to USDA Implementation Plan to Increase Public Access

March 7, 2024

In February 2024, the Data Curation Network provided feedback on the USDA’s Implementation Plan to Increase Public Access to USDA-Funded Research Results, Notice 2024-01673. We are excited to see and support the USDA’s continued efforts to provide access to invaluable data and research outputs, and submitted the following feedback (slightly edited from the full version),…

Value of Curation: End User Satisfaction Interest Group Update and Webinar

March 4, 2024

This post has been authored by End User Satisfaction Interst Group members Sophia Lafferty-Hess, Hoa Luong, Wanda Marsolek, and Sarah Wright. What is the impact of data curation? Do curated datasets have greater measurable value than non-curated datasets? How do researchers perceive the importance and value of the work performed by data curators? These are…

Get to Know DCN Curator Sherry Lake!

February 27, 2024

Sherry Lake is the Scholarly Repository Librarian at the University of Virginia. Sherry was interviewed by Madina Grace in February 2024. How did you come to your current position? I’ve been at the University of Virginia (UVa) Library for over 20 years but I’ll start in 2010 when the NSF sharing data letter came out….

DCN Website Updates 2024

February 21, 2024

Since its launch in September 2019, the DCN’s WordPress site has grown organically alongside our community. In Spring 2023, Amy Drayer, a colleague at the University of Minnesota, conducted an accessibility review of our site — and found many areas for improvement! Some of these were relatively straightforward, such as general text updates to improve…

The Data Curation Network is hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries.