4C - Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation

D3.3—Curation Costs Exchange Framework

"Transparency of digital curation costs will help organisations identify greater efficiencies and pinpoint potential optimisations. Insight into how and why peers target their investments can lead to better use of resources, help identify weaknesses and drivers in current practices, and inspire innovations. Last but not least, a community such as that facilitated by the CCEx enables members to collaborate more, communicate more, exchange information and experiences and start addressing the taboo subject of sharing financial information."

Executive Summary

To date there have been very few opportunities (and—due to trust issues—little willingness) for digital curation practitioners to exchange information relating to the cost of curation. The Cost Comparison Tool (CCT), the mainstay of the Curation Costs Exchange (CCEx) platform (http://www.curationexchange.org), allows users to upload their curation costs and compare them with those of others in a secure, controlled fashion. 

This report along with the CCEx, the CCT (http://www.curationexchange.org/compare-costs) together make up the deliverable (D3.3—Curation Costs Exchange Framework) and are intended to address the problems outlined above.

• Section 1—Introduction clarifies the purpose, the scope, the terminology, the prerequisites, the audience and the benefits of the Cost Comparison Tool.
• Section 2—Description of the Cost Comparison Tool describes the step-by-step process of submitting cost data to the tool and indicates which results are displayed.
• Section 3—Rationale and mechanisms outlines the approach selected and elaborates on the reasoning behind the most important principles of the CCT. The section also explains how the calculations are made.
• Persuading users to use the tool and submit cost data has proved to be a difficult task. We have invested significant resource into addressing security, anonymity and confidentiality issues in order to reassure stakeholders who are considering sharing sensitive data. This topic is addressed in section 4—Confidentiality and anonymity concerning the submitted data.
• We have also invested effort into communicating the benefits of sharing cost data and of using the CCT in order to do so, a topic which is addressed in section 5—Outreach.
• Section 6—The link between the Cost Comparison Tool and the Curation Costs Exchange establishes why the CCT forms the nucleus of the CCEx platform and how to benefit from the synergy that arises from that relationship.
• Section 7—The future of the Curation Costs Exchange explains succinctly a possible future for the CCEx. Discussions regarding this future are in progress and will not be finalised until the end of the 4C project (January 2015) so no firm conclusions are drawn here.

D3.3 Curation Costs Exchange Framework (1.66 MB)