Pinning It Down: Towards a Practical Definition of ‘Research Data’ for Creative Arts Institutions

Abstract

There is a widespread understanding among scientific researchers about what is meant by ‘research data’; however this does not readily translate into a creative context. As part of its engagement with the University of the Arts London (UAL) and via its support for the JISC Managing Research Data Programme, the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and partners have worked towards an acceptable and practical definition of research data for creative arts institutions. This paper describes the activities carried out to help pin down such a definition, including a literature review, short and extended interviews with researchers, interactions with an academic arts research practitioner, and distillation of the results from a one-day workshop which took place in London in September 2012.