1946932

Mid-Scale RI-2: The Research Data Ecosystem (RDE), a National Resource for Reproducible, Robust, and Transparent Social Science Research in the 21st Century

This project aims to implement a new platform for social and behavioral science data. The diverse types of data available enable groundbreaking analyses into human behavior, but they also present challenges of scale, sensitivity, and structure. Currently, conducting research is hindered by multiple incompatible standards for data, lack of interoperability, and the inherent difficulty of managing big data. There is an urgent need for new modes of access, confidentiality protection, methodological approaches, and tools to ensure that research using a variety of data types meets accepted scientific standards.

The Research Data Ecosystem (RDE) will modernize data management to enable a new era of interconnected research for the social and behavioral sciences. The platform will improve the quality of data-driven social and behavioral science research throughout the entire data life cycle. RDE will allow researchers across disciplines to conduct their work more efficiently and to create, organize, archive, access, and analyze data in ways that are not possible with existing infrastructure. Additionally, RDE will make social and behavioral data more usable outside of academia by enhancing its findability and accessibility.

This project will also provide training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, aiming to broaden and diversify participation in the social and behavioral sciences by removing technical bottlenecks to research. It is supported by the Foundation-wide Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure Program.

Specifically, this project will develop an integrated suite of software to advance research in the social and behavioral sciences. RDE will enable:

1) Interoperability: An integrated system for the entire research data life cycle, allowing data from different sources to be integrated and useful at later stages.
2) Reproducibility: Making it easier to reproduce and build on prior research results by facilitating the finding and re-use of data and code.
3) Transparency: Providing information about provenance, including source, code, and method of collection, for research data.
4) Increased efficiency of data sharing: Reducing the burden on data producers in sharing data and ensuring that shared data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR).
5) Confidentiality protection: Protecting confidentiality while increasing research access.

To achieve these goals, the project will develop the Research Data Description Framework, a metadata specification similar to the Resource Description Framework, for describing different research data life cycle events. RDE will include stand-alone functional components for each stage of the research life cycle that will be interoperable with one another and with key existing research infrastructure. The platform will support social and behavioral science researchers using traditional (e.g., survey and experimental) and novel (e.g., digital trace, imaging) types of data throughout the entire research life cycle, from data collection to analysis to sharing to re-discovery and re-analysis.

This infrastructure will improve the quality, integrity, and safety of data while increasing accessibility and collaboration between users across all social science and some behavioral science disciplines. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Regents Of The University Of Michigan

THE GOAL OF THIS FUNDING OPPORTUNITY, "MID-SCALE RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE-2", IS IDENTIFIED IN THE LINK: HTTPS://WWW.NSF.GOV/PUBLICATIONS/PUB_SUMM.JSP?ODS_KEY=NSF19542

47.075 - Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences

NSF Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (OMA) [NSF]

Division of Social Behavioral and Economic Science (SBE) [NSF]

Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1274 United States

Single Zip Code

19-542

Amendment Since initial award the total obligations have increased 470% from $6,733,662 to $38,357,018.