Recovering and Reusing Historical Data for Science: Retrospective Curation Practices Across Disciplines.

While data curation research and practice have provided a growing body of guidance for and tools to support the curation, sharing, and reuse of recent and future scientific data, attention to retrospective data curation has been limited. The Recovering and Reusing Archival Data for Science project draws on semi-structured interviews with scientists and data curators to investigate data recovery and reuse efforts focused on historical data, or data drawn from legacy research materials, across a wide range of institutional, disciplinary, and research contexts. This paper describes selected findings related to (1) the perceived value of historical data for current and future scientific research; (2) challenges particular to recovering historical data; and (3) ethical quandaries that arise in historical data recovery and reuse. These findings shed light on the potential impact of historical data recovery and implications for retrospective data curation practices in support of active scientific research across disciplines.