Curation of Digital Scientific Data

Abstract

The role of the curation process in supporting scientific data repositories is studied. It is shown that curation is an essential element of scientific work in data-intensive disciplines (Earth sciences, biology, materials science, etc.). The scale and importance of curation for scientific archives and databases have led to the emergence of extensive literature and standards governing the required actions. Measures for the preservation of data, their cleaning from distortion, quality assessment, and comprehensive description are examined in detail. The advantages and disadvantages of the existing standards of scientific metadata are studied. It is shown that the constant observance of all the requirements governing the process of curation can ensure not only safety, but also continuous enrichment of the value of scientific data.