Toward a Comprehensive Research Data Catalog at Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University has had a standard administrative procedure in place for many years to ensure that publicly funded research is made available for the public good and is preserved for appropriate amounts of time. However, research practices have not always guaranteed retention or availability, and TAMU had cause to improve the accounting for research data output. In 2023, TAMU's Vice President for Research began an initiative to address this state of affairs. The VPR started discussions with Libraries and Technology Services to develop a catalog to track grant-funded research data and increase its discoverability and impact. Such data include datasets in repositories, data housed on departmental or cloud services, and physical research artifacts in storage. To fulfill these aims, Libraries directed the development of a customized DSpace instance, leveraging the new Entities feature introduced in DSpace 7 to meet the required use-cases of the platform. With the Data@TAMU catalog now in production, the collaborating stakeholders each fulfill vital roles. The Libraries collaborate with researchers to manage and catalog data outputs, Technology Services provides development and networking services, and the VPR's office ensures deans and faculty responsibly manage data to achieve compliance.