Digital Preservation and Astronomy: Lessons for funders and the funded

TL;DR

Astronomy exemplifies best practices in digital data preservation, guided by the OAIS Reference Model, offering lessons for other scientific disciplines and funders to improve their data management strategies.

Contribution

The paper analyzes astronomy's data preservation practices, highlighting strengths, areas for improvement, and lessons applicable to broader scientific data management.

Findings

Astronomy's data preservation aligns well with OAIS standards.

Big Science disciplines share common data management challenges.

Astronomy provides exemplary practices for digital preservation.

Abstract

Astronomy looks after its data better than most disciplines, and it is no coincidence that the consensus standard for the archival preservation of all types of digital assets -- the OAIS Reference Model -- emerged originally from the space science community. It is useful to highlight both what is different about astronomy (and indeed about Big Science in general), what could be improved, and what is exemplary, and in the process I will give a brief introduction to the framework of the OAIS model, and its useful conceptual vocabulary. I will illustrate this with a discussion of the spectrum of big-science data management practices from astronomy, through gravitational wave (GW) data, to particle physics.