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# Data Management Plan: FIRS project (ID: 101106142)

Fabrizio Ducati

## ► To cite this version:

Fabrizio Ducati. Data Management Plan: FIRS project (ID: 101106142). Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, Centre Camille Jullian, UMR 7299. 2024. hal-05252317

HAL Id: hal-05252317

https://hal.science/hal-05252317v1

Submitted on 12 Sep 2025

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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
# DATA MANAGEMENT PLAN

<table><thead><tr><th colspan="2">PROJECT</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Project number:</td><td>101106142</td></tr><tr><td>Project acronym:</td><td>FIRS</td></tr><tr><td>Project name:</td><td>Frontiers Inside Roman Sicily: Culture, Economy and Society between Late Antiquity and the Early Byzantine Period</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><thead><tr><th colspan="2">DATA MANAGEMENT PLAN</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Date:</td><td>27.06.2024</td></tr><tr><td>Version:</td><td>1.0</td></tr></tbody></table>

## 1. Data Summary

The FIRS project reuses a large amount of legacy data primarily consisting of unpublished fieldwork reports and catalogs, contextual relationships between artifacts, ecofacts and features, as well as drawings, pictures, plans, sections, and paper correspondences from previous archaeological excavations in Sicily. These data hold significant scientific value as they can help to understand the human and natural conditions that resulted in specific archaeological evidence. Their interpretation contributes to a better understanding of the history of the sites and achieving the project objectives. These data also hold significant cultural value as a part of our heritage as they are the only records of the primary data source lost during excavations. The project mostly re-used data types and formats are:

<table><thead><tr><th>Data types</th><th>Data formats</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Text documents</td><td>Microsoft Word (.doc)</td></tr><tr><td>Text documents</td><td>PDF (.pdf)</td></tr><tr><td>Spreadsheets</td><td>Microsoft Excel (.xlsx)</td></tr><tr><td>Raster images</td><td>JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)</td></tr></tbody></table>

These are the same main data types and formats we expect to produce during the project, alongside with:

<table><thead><tr><th>Data types</th><th>Data formats</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Raster images</td><td>TIFF (.tif, .tiff)</td></tr><tr><td>Raster images</td><td>Nikon Electronic Format (.nef)</td></tr><tr><td>Geographical Information Systems (GIS)</td><td>Esri Shapefiles (.shp &amp; related files)</td></tr><tr><td>Vector images</td><td>Adobe Illustrator (.ai)</td></tr></tbody></table>

The actual data size is 125 GB. This value primarily resulted from the digital scanning of all paper documentation and from the fieldwork protocol applied to the images captured in dual formats (jpg and nef). Being an unprocessed format, nef ensures the integrity of the image exactly as the camera's sensor sees it, but it results significantly larger than JPEG files. At the end of the project, we expect to produce an approximate data volume of 250-300 GB. Our research draws from a rich and diverse array of data sources:

<table><thead><tr><th>Data origin</th><th>Production dates</th><th> Creators</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Campanaio and Castagna projects</td><td>1980-1998</td><td>Prof. Roger Wilson, Dr. Roberta Tomber, Dr. John Hayes</td></tr><tr><td>Japanese excavations at Durrueli</td><td>1979-1985</td><td>Prof. Masanori Aoyagi</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>Palermo: excavation at Montevergini monastery</td><td>1998-2001</td><td>Dr. Rosa Maria Cucco, Dr. Daniela Lauro</td></tr><tr><td>Palermo: excavation at Piazza della Vittoria</td><td>1833-1915</td><td>Antonino Salinas, Ettore Gabrici</td></tr><tr><td>Lilybaeum: excavation at Domus della Venatio</td><td>1972</td><td>Dr. C.A. Di Stefano</td></tr><tr><td>Lilybaeum: excavations at Insula III</td><td>1972-1978</td><td>Dr. C.A. Di Stefano</td></tr></table>

The newly generated data pertain to the same sites. The data utility primary concern:

1. Graduate students and faculty members.

2. Professional archaeologists and archaeometrists.

3. People involved in Cultural Heritage management, promotion, and preservation beyond Academia.

4. General public with an interest in archaeology.

## 2. FAIR data

### 2.1. Making data findable, including provisions for metadata

Each dataset will have a Persistent Identifier like the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), as detailed in § 2.2. The datasets will also be provided with rich scientific and documentary metadata, making it easier for humans and machines to discover them on the web. To achieve this goal, we will refer to the extended [Dublin Core standards](https://www.dublincore.org/), which proved to be the most user-friendly and widely applicable metadata system in archaeology<fnref n="1" />. Metadata will give information about:

1. Title

2. Author or Creator

3. Subject and Keywords

4. Description

5. Publisher

6. Other Contributors

7. Date

8. Resource Type

9. Format

10. Resource Identifier

11. Relation

12. Source Resources

13. Language

14. Coverage

15. Rights Management

For more specific dataset like GIS or environmental data, we will refer to:

1. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) - Digital Geospatial Metadata.

2. Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) - Directory Interchange Format (DIF).

Using search keywords in the metadata will optimize the possibility for their discovery and then potential re-use. Keywords and other terminology to describe our metadata will refer to a controlled vocabulary in the archaeological as detailed in § 2.3. The data treatment will comply with the protocol put in place by the Centre Camille Jullian for handling the scientific documentation.

### 2.2. Making data accessible

**Repository:**

We will deposit all the data in a trusted repository. According to the [Criteria for the Selection of Trustworthy Repositories](https://www.crdh.org/criteria-for-the-selection-of-trustworthy-repositories) and [CatOpidor](https://www.catopidor.com/), we agreed that [Nakala](https://nakala.org/) is the repository that

<footnote n="1">¹ Wise, Alicia, and Paul Miller. 1997. 'Why Metadata Matters in Archaeology'. *Internet Archaeology* 2 (April). https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.2.5.</footnote>
best meets our needs. Nakala is a disciplinary repository powered by CNRS and MESR (IR* Huma-Num). It accepts data in different formats (text, sound, image and video files) from projects in Social and Human Sciences and guarantee:

1. Automatic and, on request, human moderation.

2. A Digital Object Identifier.

3. Long-term archiving service on request.

4. Embargo.

## Data:

All data will be openly available and licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 as soon as possible. It also applies to the data that will be excluded from publication or will not meet an initial assumption. There are no contract restrictions that privatize or limit data management or use. The re-used or new-generate data do not contain sensitive national, environmental, and animal security information or industrial secrets. The data does not even contain sensitive personal information. Should any personal information arise during the project implementation, it will be subject to the [General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:5201C30000000&from=EN). Exceptionally, an embargo not exceeding six months may be applied when envisaged publishing multi-author papers in not a short time. This provision aims to ensure respect for the intellectual property of all contributors as defined by the [CRediT author statement](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). The data will be accessed in Nakala using the standard secure https protocol.

## Metadata:

Metadata will be openly available and licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 as Nakala permits. In no case the embargo will apply to the metadata. Metadata will remain available and findable as long as the selected repository exists. Regarding specific formats like GIS files or vector images, metadata will provide references and documentation about open-access software needed to read them.

## 2.3. Making data interoperable

Data and metadata descriptions will refer to a controlled vocabulary and ontology based on the [PACTOLS thesaurus<fnref n="2" />](https://www.cldc.org/thesaurus/). We will prefer all the terminology that aligns with GéoNames, Wikidata, and especially the Getty Institute's Art and Architecture Thesaurus (ATT). [ARIADNEplus](https://www.ariadneplus.org/) uses the latter as the primary classification source for describing each type of entity for which a metadata record is created. To ensure the data interoperability, proprietary formats listed in § 1 will be transformed into open formats. The preferred formats will be:

<table><thead><tr><td>Data type</td><td>Data format</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Text documents</td><td>PDF/A (.pdf)</td></tr><tr><td>Text documents</td><td>ODT (.odt)</td></tr><tr><td>Spreadsheets</td><td>CSV (.csv)</td></tr><tr><td>Databases</td><td>CSV (.csv)</td></tr><tr><td>Raster images</td><td>TIFF (.tif, .tiff)</td></tr><tr><td>Vector images</td><td>SVG (.svg)</td></tr><tr><td>Computer Aided Design (CAD)</td><td>SVG (.svg)</td></tr><tr><td>Geographical Information Systems (GIS)</td><td>GML (.gml)</td></tr><tr><td>Georeferenced images</td><td>GeoTIFF (.tif, .tiff)</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote n="2">² Nouvel, Blandine. 2019. ‘Le Thésaurus PACTOLS, Système de Vocabulaire Contrôlé et Partagé Pour l’archéologie’. *Archéologies Numériques*3 (1). https://doi.org/10.21494/ISTE.OP.2019.0356.</footnote>
The choice of open formats is in accordance with Nakala policies and will allow long-term saving at the *Centre Informatique National de l'Enseignement Supérieur* (CINES).

Compatibility between data format and CINES archiving policies is ensured by the online tool [FACILE](https://facile.cines.fr/).

## 2.4. Increase data re-use

We plan to publish data papers in journals like the *Journal of Open Archaeology Data* to validate data analysis and facilitate their re-use. Data papers will include a detailed description of the scientific data, its metadata, the circumstances and methods of its collection, but without any analysis or interpretation. In addition, all scientific papers published during the project will reference to datasets stored on Nakala and their related data papers. Data will be licensed under the Creative Common CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 to make them freely available in the public domain and permit the most comprehensive re-use possible. Data produced during the project may be used by third parties, e.g., Universities and other Research Institutes (e.g., CNRS), Institutions engaged in preserving and enhancing cultural heritage (archaeological parks, museums, superintendencies), associations or individuals engaged in communicating and promoting cultural heritage to the public.

## 3. Other research outputs

All research outputs, including preprints, papers, data papers, lectures, presentations, will be deposited in *HAL Open Science*, a multidisciplinary open archive for the sharing of published and unpublished research. Thanks to the compliance with the FAIR principles, a standardized metadata framework, and the presence of a unique identifier (HAL-id and DOI), HAL makes research outputs easy to find, well referenced by search engines, and interconnected with other services (ORCID, preprint servers). It also guarantees different licenses, the possibility versioning outputs and their long-term preservation.

## 4. Allocation of resources

Funded by the French government, Nakala is fully supported by Huma-Num in terms of development, upgrades, and maintenance. As a result, no fees are charged when data is deposited in Nakala. Nakala guarantees an advanced preservation level upon request in partnership with CINES. In this advanced deposit circuit, long-term preservation is ensured by CINES, which also provides additional guarantees such as the legal value of the deposit, file integrity, and format migration for readability. Dr. Fabrizio Ducati is the responsible of data management inside the FIRS project. He will receive guidance and support from the Nakala and HAL Open Science teams, as well as from the *Maison Méditarranéen des Sciences de l'Homme*.

## 5. Data security

All data are currently stored on personal One Drive cloud and partially on the institutional AMUbox cloud. According to our security protocol, no data is stored in single copy on physical devices such as laptops, hard disks, or USB keys. Research data will be deposited on Nakala as detailed in § 2.2, while research outputs will be deposited HAL Open Science as detailed in § 3. Relevant dataset will be forwarded to CINES for long term preservation and curation as detailed in § 4.

## 6. Ethics

There are no ethics or legal issues that can have an impact on data sharing.
## 7. Other issues

As of the present, we do not make use of other specific procedures for data management.

<table><thead><tr><th colspan="3">HISTORY OF CHANGES</th></tr><tr><th>VERSION</th><th>PUBLICATION DATE</th><th>CHANGE</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1.0</td><td>05.05.2021</td><td>Initial version (new MFF).</td></tr><tr><td>1.1</td><td>01.04.2022</td><td>Reformatted to align with other deliverables templates.</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>