The Research Data Management LibGuide is designed to provide guidance, best practices, and resources on the steps within the research data lifecycle. The portal additionally considers DOT specific requirements and consolidates RDM resources by serving as a single point of access for users to further educate themselves on best practices and successful strategies for implementation.
NTL is one of five national libraries, the only one within a principal Federal Statistical Agency, and serves as an open access digital repository of transportation information, including:
All collection materials are in the public domain, available for reuse without restriction.
The National Transportation Library (NTL) has had a role in archiving Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) data since NTL's founding in 1998, as part of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). NTL’s mission is to maintain and facilitate access to statistical, geographical, and other transportation research data and information needed for transportation decision-making at Federal, State, and local levels. In the 2012 Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) legislation, NTL’s role expanded. MAP-21 mandates that NTL:
NTL's roles in data management, access, and preservation were expanded again in 2015, through the USDOT Public Access Plan, titled: “Plan to Increase Public Access to the Results of Federally-Funded Scientific Research." The Public Access Plan calls on NTL to:
In order to help carry out our legal mandates, implement data management and data curation best practices, and to bring USDOT created and funded data management practices in line with public access policies, the NTL offers a growing range of data services.
Further, the NTL is currently working to improve data management across the federal landscape with a number of other federal agencies involved in scientific and technical information research and development through the Commerce, Energy, NASA, and Defense Information managers group, known as CENDI. NTL is playing a leading role in developing federal data management standards and best practices.
The pages in this guide describe the various data services available from the NTL, as well as giving USDOT researchers tools and best practices for improving their data management routines. Our goals include making USDOT-created and USDOT-funded datasets available to researchers, analysts, and the public for decades to come. The practices described in this guide will help us, and you, achieve that goal.
Science.gov provides access to millions of authoritative scientific research results from U.S. federal agencies.Science.gov is an official website of the U.S. government providing ready access to the massive stores of federally funded scientific research results, without needing to know which agency funded the research. Research results include scientific and technical reports, peer-reviewed scholarly publications, digital data, software, conference presentations and proceedings, and other scientific and technical information that federal agencies publish resulting from their research investments.
Originally launched in 2002, Science.gov searches content from across multiple federal agencies that fund scientific research and provides top-level results from those agencies, where users get the most relevant results for the information they search. Unlike typical web-based search engines that crawl and index web content at unknown frequencies, Science.gov uses a search technology that retrieves results in real-time. This ensures that the most recent content is available for search and retrieval by Science.gov.
For more information on the AASHTO Core Data Principles check out their site at https://data.transportation.org/aashto-core-data-principles/#principle
Jesse Ann Long, Data Curation Librarian, National Transportation Library
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4962-1380
Leighton L Christiansen, Former Data Curator, National Transportation Library, Data Curator / Data Librarian (Contracted to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Office of Science Quality and Library Services (OSQLS) Knowledge Management Team
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0543-4268
Peyton Tvrdy, Data Curation and Data Management Fellow, National Transportation Library
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