Peer-Reviewed Data Archives

Popular scientific data archives eventually run out of resources to curate their data. It is much more practical to shift to a peer review mode for data curation. This will require high quality tools which enable the scientific community to assess data quality and validate the data. It may also require an open access model in which depositors will pay to have their data publicly available. Data that is deposited without open access fees will require subscriptions to cover the costs.

The ability to charge fees will raise the bar of the quality of service that depositors will experience.

It's far cheaper to manage a group of developers who add features and improve usability that the growing demand for in-house curators. The design of such an archive will now expand to include reviewer users in addition to deposition users.

The key pieces of technology required for this to work are:

• the ability to quickly design data models that are operational. Given that scientific disciplines are constantly changing, it should be possible to create completely new archives at the drop of a hat.
• the ability to quickly evolve both data models and their dependencies. Once an archive is created, the underlying data models will need to constantly improve so as to meet the growing needs of the field without sacrificing available data.