A new U.S. National Academies report, Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age. The page for the report looks as though it’s behind a paywall, but scroll a little further down the page to find links to full-text page images. The report was commissioned in 2006, and the Chronicle of Higher Education has a short journalistic summary.

I’m thinking we need new long-term personal financial instruments that fund/ensure that the family/institution/archivists are sent the keys to a universal “digital vault” after someone’s death, the vault containing a structured and tagged backup archive of that person’s vital academic data, papers, blogs, book files, bibliographies, etc.