On September 17-18, 2019, the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) hosted a data-focused workshop to gain a deeper understanding of data-related challenges and needs, and how to help address them.  This was the third Data ID Service Workshop hosted by OSTI.

OSTI manages the DOE Data ID Service and the Interagency Data ID Service, which offers DOE researchers and U.S. federal agencies the opportunity to have DOIs assigned to their data and registered with DataCite - an international non-profit organization that supports data visibility, ease of data citation in scholarly publications, data preservation and future re-use, and data access and retrievability. Through the Data ID Services, OSTI assigns DOIs to data objects whose metadata is submitted by both DOE and its contractors and grantee researchers and interagency partners.  These data objects and DOIs are then made discoverable through OSTI's search tools OSTI.GOV and DOE Data Explorer (DDE), and are indexed with major search engines such as Google and Google Dataset Search.

The two-day workshop was structured to enable open discussion and practical learning opportunities through short presentations and breakout discussion sessions.  Attendees included DOE-funded researchers, data managers, DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) managers, DOE Data ID Service and Interagency Data ID Service clients, and other key data stakeholders. Sessions covered topics such as metadata ingest, research workflow and data creation, interlinking data and other research, DOIs for non-traditional research objects, DOE Data Explorer and data discovery, and the use of other persistent identifiers. Participants from DOE labs and other agencies were also given the opportunity to share their approach to data management and use of the Data ID services that OSTI provides.

Each workshop session began with a short presentation to set the stage for the breakout discussions. Breakout discussion groups were kept small to encourage conversation as the group talked through a series of questions. The workshop format allowed attendees to engage each other and OSTI participants about pertinent issues and topics that affect their work with data. OSTI collected feedback throughout the sessions that will inform improvements and enhancements to the tools and services offered to users. OSTI plans to continue this workshop series to learn more about the data needs of the DOE and interagency community.

If you would like to learn more about the workshop, please visit the DDE page about the 2019 Data ID Service Workshop.  To learn more about the DOE Data Explorer or the Data ID Service, please contact us at ddecomments@osti.gov or DOEDataID@osti.gov.