Pipeline Newsletter - July 2025

Welcome to the DCC Pipeline newsletter!

Our monthly newsletter features news updates from the community, information about DCC work and services as well as important dates for your calendar. We hope you enjoy!

At a glance...

In this edition of Pipeline, we share the results of the FIDELIS landscape survey, announce news of the PSDI Showcase event and highlight a resource on AI.

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DCC in focus

IDCC26 Submissions Deadlines Extended

The theme for the 20th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC26) is AI, austerity, and authoritarianism: contemporary challenges in digital curation. To give our community more time to submit proposals, our programme committee have extended the deadline for all submission types.

• 3 August 2025 – Papers and Lightning Talks
• 14 September 2025 – Posters
• 30 September 2025 – Workshops

Learn more about the submission extension on our website. 

Interested in becoming an IDCC reviewer?

If you are interested in joining our panel of IDCC reviewers, please click the link below to complete a short webform on our website.

Save the date: DMPonline September Usergroup meeting

Online, 15 September 2025

Our upcoming session will focus on data retention , exploring its intersections with digital preservation, privacy regulations, intellectual property, and open science and how these themes can be addressed in DMPs. 

We will also share exciting updates on the work we are doing to implement Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) for DMPs. Do not miss this opportunity to deepen your understanding, share your opinions and ideas.

RDA Europe/DCC Training

Developing Research Data and Software Management Policies

Last month we announced that we are partnering with Research Data Alliance (RDA) Europe to host a series of virtual training sessions designed to help organisations develop or update their research data and software management policies. The virtual course will start in September 2025.

Each ticket purchased by an organisation provides up to three places for their team on the course. This course is intended for anyone who finds themselves tasked with drafting or updating an institutional data policy  including research data management professionals, librarians, data stewards and research information managers.

Places are limited to 20 organisations to enable peer to peer discussion and knowledge exchange. Book your place via our Eventbrite page.

Funded projects

FIDELIS landscape survey analysis

DCC is a partner in the European Commission funded  FIDELIS https://eden-fidelis.eu/project which kicked off in January 2025 and runs until December 2028. The project aims to establish a European Network of Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs) and recently ran a survey inviting the repository community to share their current practices, challenges, and needs regarding trustworthiness. The survey results will inform the work FIDELIS is doing to establish the network and to identify areas where training and support are needed. The survey attracted 159 responses, with the following top line messages emerging: 

• There is a move in the repository community towards active preservation
• There is growing convergence on common standards and practices
• Lack of resources make it hard to adopt and adapt to new opportunities and challenges
• A reliance on third party services is seen as a challenge cross-national data sharing are fragmented 
• The burden for GDPR compliance tends to fall on researchers.
• There is a need for support for repository certification, as well as developing and sustaining repository services more generally. Support for defining access conditions and to optimise engagement is also needed.  
• Training should be practical, specific, and connect to expertise
• Most respondents were enthusiastic about the concept of the FIDELIS Network, but money may be a barrier to participation.

Read the full report on Zenodo. 

Exploring Data Curation and Management in Physical Sciences: Physical Science Data Infrastructure (PSDI) Roadshows in Southampton and Cambridge

DCC’s Agnes Jasinksa has been out and about this week meeting researchers and data stewards working in the physical sciences as part of our work on the PSDI project. Via presentations and discussions, the two roadshows enabled knowledge exchange around current practices, challenges, and future directions in the curation and management of research data in physical sciences, as well as fostering networking and collaboration. The event also highlighted PSDI’s work and, importantly, gathered community input for identifying future priorities and activities that will support data management and curation in the physical sciences. 

PSDI Showcase 17 September 2025
Interested in learning more about the PSDI project, join the team in Birmingham on 17 September for the PSDI Showcase.

Resource of the month

RDA Artificial Intelligence and Data Visitation Working Group’s Guidance for Ethics Committees Reviewing Artificial Intelligence and Data Visitation

Research Ethics Committees (RECs) and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are charged with the responsibility to protect the rights, dignity and welfare of research volunteers, including use of their data that may have been collected for other, non-research purposes. Generally speaking, REC/IRBs review research involving humans according to a principled approach and usually refer to a specific set of regulatory criteria to document their assessment of the potential risks and benefits of the proposed research. With the advancement of AI and its growing use in research, REC/IRBs are confronted with new challenges when reviewing the downstream potential negative risks of AI on research participants a human society at large, the first of which is a dearth of concrete guidance for review of AI in research. The recommendations set forth in this guidance outline basic ethical principles that will assist research ethics committees to understand the questions, methods, and procedures for reviewing Artificial Intelligence (AI), including use of Data Visitation (DV) in research with humans.

From the community

Data Makers and Users’ Views on Useful Paradata

Understanding and making data (re)usable requires adequate documentation of the data but also information on how it has been created, curated, manipulated and used, termed in data documentation literature as paradata. This paper, published in the International Journal of Digital Curation (IJDC) reports results of a survey study (N=91) of data creating and (re)using archaeologists' views of what data creation, curation, manipulation and use related information they consider important when they are working with data.

Read the full journal article on the IJDC website.

For your calendar

Small habits for big impact: three small steps to promote research transparency

Online: 15:00 – 16:00 (CEST), 17 July 2025

This  webinar, presented by Dr. Louise Saul, offers a practical and focused approach to making Open Research more transparent and manageable. Aimed at physical scientists, data managers, research software engineers, and academic librarians, it introduces three simple, actionable changes to embed transparency into research workflows, with real-world examples, habit-forming tips, and space for discussion. 

Register now via the PSDI website. 

Heritage Week 2025: Preserving Irish online cultural heritage through web archiving

Online: 16:00 – 17:00 (CEST), 19 August 2025

Join the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) and guest lecturer Dr. Sharon Healy to learn more about the preservation of digital heritage on the web, including a demonstration of DRI’s web archiving tool for preserving Irish websites for long-term reusability. The event will discuss the importance of websites as heritage artefacts, why they are at-risk digital content, and what is being done nationally to preserve them.

This event is being hosted as part of National Heritage Week 2025, register for the webinar on the DRI website.

Research Data Alliance (RDA) 25th Plenary Meeting (P25)

13-16 October, 2025 in Brisbane, Australia

From groundbreaking keynotes to innovative sessions, panel discussions, and networking opportunities, RDA P25 promises to be an unforgettable experience. RDA P25 combines with the International Data Week 2025. The programme is now available on the RDA website.

...and finally

We also bid farewell to the European Commission funded FAIR-IMPACT project which wrapped up at the end of May. The DCC was a core partner in the project for the past three years and led a workpackage focused on engagement, adoption and implementation of FAIR-enabling practices. As part of our work, we coordinated the support of 206 teams from organisations across Europe. It has been a real pleasure to work with such talented colleagues and members of the community. Special thanks go to DANS for coordinating and delivering this project so effectively. We encourage you to explore the variety of useful project outputs including recommendations on making repositories more transparent and trustworthy, guidelines for recommended metadata standards for research software, and recommendations on persistent identifiers.

Joy Davidson, Associate Director of the DCC