Guest Editorial: Research Data: It’s What You Do With Them

These days it may be stating the obvious that the number of data resources, their complexity and diversity is growing rapidly due to the compound effects of increasing speed and resolution of digital instruments, due to pervasive data-collection automation and due to the growing power of computers. Just because we are becoming used to the accelerating growth of data resources, it does not mean we can be complacent; they represent an enormous wealth of opportunity to extract information, to make discoveries and to inform policy. But all too often it still takes a heroic effort to discover and exploit those opportunities, hence the research and progress, charted by the Fourth International Digital Curation Conference1 and recorded in this issue of the International Journal of Digital Curation, are an invaluable step on a long and demanding journey.