Validating Research Data Management Core Competencies: A survey of US data librarianship current practices to inform the curricula

In the context of massive datasets across disciplines, US higher education institutions provide research data services in their academic libraries and elsewhere on campuses. The core competencies to perform these emerging occupations have been developed through an extensive literature review and focus groups. This presentation will provide results from a survey validation study of current professionals to validate core competencies for research data management (RDM). The sampling frame is of data managers, stewards, curators and any related professionals from a variety of communities including, Academic Research Library (ARL) institutions, International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASIST), Research Data Alliance (RDA), Committee on Data (CODATA), Research Data Access and Preservation Association (RDAP), Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), and others. Although US-focused, the survey findings can help determine the most important core competencies to include in any RDM curricula. The curricula resulting from the survey validation is delivered in US information schools (iSchools), but lessons learned could be used to inform curricula in any domain and address the gap in earth and environmental science education.