Toward the Conceptualization of Data Quality Assurance in Research Data Repositories

ABSTRACT Data quality assurance (DQA) is critical to research data sharing and reuse. There has been a growing recognition of data transparency, reproducibility, credibility, and validity in research. Although the research data curation literature is large, it lacks data quality theory‐guided examinations of DQA practices in research data repositories. This poster paper reports on the preliminary findings of a larger study that examines DQA practices in research data repositories, including their use of DQA ontologies, standards, and metadata vocabularies. In particular, the paper examines two quality standards and an ontology for their conceptualization of DQA activities and their structure. The authors used the findings of the analysis and the data quality literature to synthesize an initial model of a DQA process in research data repositories that conceptualizes three DQA activities: evaluation, intervention, and communication. This paper can inform the development of ontologies and best practice guides for designing and evaluating DQA workflows in research data repositories.