UCLA

Research output is becoming increasingly digital. To harness the potential of the data and digital research output being produced in all fields, information professionals need to make research data discoverable to other scholars and students. This thesis focuses on understanding the various definitions that scholars use to characterize their data and other research outputs, as well as the methods and tools they use to disseminate, manage, and make their work discoverable.

The UCLA Data Registry is a tool designed to serve the greater UCLA research community by collecting and making available surrogate records of research datasets. To figure out how to build this system in accordance with the needs of the community, a total of 20 researchers from disparate disciplines were interviewed about their data and metadata practices. The results indicate that researchers' attitudes towards making their work discoverable depend on their concept and definition of data.