First results from the PARSE.Insight project: HEP survey on data preservation, re-use and (open) access

There is growing interest in the issues of preservation and re-use of the records of science, in the "digital era". The aim of the PARSE.Insight project, partly financed by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Program, is twofold: to provide an assessment of the current activities, trends and risks in the field of digital preservation of scientific results, from primary data to published articles; to inform the design of the preservation layer of an emerging e-Infrastructure for e-Science. CERN, as a partner of the PARSE.Insight consortium, is performing an in-depth case study on data preservation, re-use and (open) access within the High-Energy Physics (HEP) community. The first results of this large-scale survey of the attitudes and concerns of HEP scientists are presented. The survey reveals the widespread opinion that data preservation is "very important" to "crucial". At the same time, it also highlights the chronic lack of resources and infrastructure to tackle this issue, as well as deeply-rooted concerns on the access to, and the understanding of, preserved data in future analyses.
Comment: Contribution to the First Workshop on Data Preservation and Long-Term Analysis in High-Energy Physics, DESY, Hamburg, Germany, January 26th-28th 2009