Joining Forces to Define and Promote Best Practices
What is the DCC?
The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) is an internationally recognised centre of expertise in digital curation, research data management, research reproducibility, and open science, jointly based at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow.
In addition to working on a range of national and international projects, the DCC offers consulting services, develops training and resources, and organises events including the annual International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC). The DCC is also the home of DMPonline, an open-source platform for creating, updating, and sharing data management and software management plans. Through its active involvement in key initiatives and working groups focused on developing and promoting community standards and best practices, the DCC serves as both a knowledge hub and a community hub.
The Challenge: Raising the Bar for Data Management in Physical Sciences
Good research requires good data. Yet across the physical sciences, practices around data management and curation remain inconsistent, making it harder to ensure research is reproducible, reusable, and collaborative. Researchers, data stewards, publishers, funders, and institutions all have a role to play, but without clear, shared standards and infrastructure to support them, progress is slow.
The PSDI-DCC partnership was formed to address this directly, bringing domain-agnostic expertise in digital curation together with PSDI’s national infrastructure to define and promote best practices tailored to the physical sciences community.
Community Engagement and Insight Gathering
Since the partnership began, the DCC has been actively involved in organising and delivering in-person community events to gather stakeholder input and foster discussion about current practices, challenges, and opportunities in data management and curation across the physical sciences.
Two one-day community workshops for researchers, data stewards, and research support staff were held at the PSDI Community Workshop in Edinburgh in July 2024 and the PSDI Community Workshop in Southampton in August 2024, followed by a two-day forum for librarians and research support professionals in Edinburgh in March 2025.
Two further events were held as part of the PSDI Roadshow, in Cambridge in June 2025 and Southampton in July 2025, examining the state and future directions of data curation and management in physical sciences from a range of perspectives, including data curation professionals, research support staff, and researchers across physical science fields.
In close collaboration with PSDI colleagues, the DCC led on all aspects of these events, from agenda building and speaker invitations through to registration, promotion, moderation, and synthesising outcomes into internal and external reports.
Partnership with PSDI
The PSDI-DCC partnership began in 2024 and has been mutually enriching from the outset. While contributing expertise in the management and curation of digital research outputs to PSDI’s activities, the DCC team has gained new understanding of the unique processes, requirements, challenges, and opportunities specific to physical sciences data.
The joining of forces around community building and stakeholder engagement has been equally valuable, with both organisations extending their reach to new research areas and professional groups, while deepening engagement with their existing stakeholders.
The DCC Team
Looking Ahead
The PSDI-DCC partnership is entering a new phase, with a growing focus on translating the insights gathered through community engagement into practical guidance and widely accessible resources. As the collaboration matures, PSDI and DCC are committed to ensuring that best practices in data management and curation are not only defined but embedded into the everyday work of physical sciences researchers across the UK and beyond.