Archives des mots-clés : research data

A reputation economy: how individual reward considerations trump systemic arguments for open access to data

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Authors : Benedikt Fecher, Sascha Friesike, Marcel Hebing, Stephanie Linek

Open access to research data has been described as a driver of innovation and a potential cure for the reproducibility crisis in many academic fields. Against this backdrop, policy makers are increasingly advocating for making research data and supporting material openly available online.

Despite its potential to further scientific progress, widespread data sharing in small science is still an ideal practised in moderation. In this article, we explore the question of what drives open access to research data using a survey among 1564 mainly German researchers across all disciplines.

We show that, regardless of their disciplinary background, researchers recognize the benefits of open access to research data for both their own research and scientific progress as a whole. Nonetheless, most researchers share their data only selectively.

We show that individual reward considerations conflict with widespread data sharing. Based on our results, we present policy implications that are in line with both individual reward considerations and scientific progress.

URL : A reputation economy: how individual reward considerations trump systemic arguments for open access to data

DOI : 10.1057/palcomms.2017.51

Global Data Quality Assessment and the Situated Nature of “Best” Research Practices in Biology

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Author : Sabina Leonelli

This paper reflects on the relation between international debates around data quality assessment and the diversity characterising research practices, goals and environments within the life sciences.

Since the emergence of molecular approaches, many biologists have focused their research, and related methods and instruments for data production, on the study of genes and genomes.

While this trend is now shifting, prominent institutions and companies with stakes in molecular biology continue to set standards for what counts as ‘good science’ worldwide, resulting in the use of specific data production technologies as proxy for assessing data quality.

This is problematic considering (1) the variability in research cultures, goals and the very characteristics of biological systems, which can give rise to countless different approaches to knowledge production; and (2) the existence of research environments that produce high-quality, significant datasets despite not availing themselves of the latest technologies.

Ethnographic research carried out in such environments evidences a widespread fear among researchers that providing extensive information about their experimental set-up will affect the perceived quality of their data, making their findings vulnerable to criticisms by better-resourced peers. T

hese fears can make scientists resistant to sharing data or describing their provenance. To counter this, debates around Open Data need to include critical reflection on how data quality is evaluated, and the extent to which that evaluation requires a localised assessment of the needs, means and goals of each research environment.

URL : Global Data Quality Assessment and the Situated Nature of “Best” Research Practices in Biology

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-032

Research Data Management in Research Institutions in Zimbabwe

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Authors : Josiline Chigwada, Blessing Chiparausha, Justice Kasiroori

The research was aimed at evaluating how research data are being managed in research institutions in Zimbabwe. The study also sought to assess the challenges that are faced in research data management by research institutions in Zimbabwe.

Twenty five institutions of higher learning and other organisations that deal with research were selected using purposive sampling to participate in the study.

An online questionnaire on SurveyMonkey was sent to the selected participants and telephone interviews were done to follow up on participants who failed to respond on time. Data that were collected using interviews were entered manually into SurveyMonkey for easy analysis.

It was found out that proper research data management is not being done. Researchers were managing their own research data. Most of the research data were in textual and spreadsheet format. Graphical, audio, video, database, structured text formats and software applications research data were also available.

Lack of guidelines on good practice, inadequate human resources, technological obsolescence, insecure infrastructure, use of different vocabulary between librarians and researchers, inadequate financial resources, absence of research data management policies and lack of support by institutional authorities and researchers negatively impacted on research data management.

Authors recommend the establishment of research data repositories and use of existing research data repositories that are registered with the Registry of Research Data Repositories to ensure that research data standards are adhered to when doing research.

URL : Research Data Management in Research Institutions in Zimbabwe

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-031

 

An Analysis of Federal Policy on Public Access to Scientific Research Data

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Authors : Adam Kriesberg, Kerry Huller, Ricardo Punzalan, Cynthia Parr

The 2013 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memo on federally-funded research directed agencies with research and development budgets above $100 million to develop and release plans to increase and broaden access to research results, both published literature and data.

The agency responses have generated discussion and interest but are yet to be analyzed and compared. In this paper, we examine how 19 federal agencies responded to the memo, written by John Holdren, on issues of scientific data and the extent of their compliance to the directives outlined in the memo.

We present a varied picture of the readiness of federal science agencies to comply with the memo through a comparative analysis and close reading of the contents of these responses.

While some agencies, particularly those with a long history of supporting and conducting science, scored well, other responses indicate that some agencies have only taken a few steps towards implementing policies that comply with the memo.

These results are of interest to the data curation community as they reveal how different agencies across the federal government approach their responsibilities for research data management, and how new policies and requirements might continue to affect scientists and research communities.

URL : An Analysis of Federal Policy on Public Access to Scientific Research Data

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-027

Inventory of Research Data Management Services in France

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Author : Violaine Rebouillat

Data has become more and more ubiquitous in the research context. As a result, a growing number of services are created to analyze, store and share research data. This has induced the Research Data Working Group of the Digital Scientific Library (BSN10) to launch an inventory of French research data management services, funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

The inventory covers all services that are managed by French institutions and infrastructures and dedicated to public research teams from all fields. Sixty services, provided by forty-five structures, have already been identified and analyzed.

The paper describes the methodology used to carry out the inventory and analyzes these first results by service type, scope and research field. It also emphasizes the heterogeneous and emergent nature of the inventoried services.

URL : Inventory of Research Data Management Services in France

Alternative location : http://ebooks.iospress.nl/publication/46651

Openness in Scholarship: A Return to Core Values?

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Author : Cameron Neylon

The debate over the meaning, and value, of open movements has intensified. The fear of co-option of various efforts from Open Access to Open Data is driving a reassessment and re-definition of what is intended by “open”.

In this article I apply group level models from cultural studies and economics to argue that the tension between exclusionary group formation and identity and aspirations towards inclusion and openness are a natural part of knowledge-making.

Situating the traditional Western Scientific Knowledge System as a culture-made group, I argue that the institutional forms that support the group act as economic underwriters for the process by which groups creating exclusive knowledge invest in the process of making it more accessible, less exclusive, and more public-good-like, in exchange for receiving excludable goods that sustain the group.

A necessary consequence of this is that our institutions will be conservative in their assessment of what knowledge-goods are worth of consideration and who is allowed within those institutional systems. Nonetheless the inclusion of new perspectives and increasing diversity underpins the production of general knowledge.

I suggest that instead of positioning openness as new, and in opposition to traditional closed systems, it may be more productive to adopt a narrative in which efforts to increase inclusion are seen as a very old, core value of the academy, albeit one that is a constant work in progress.

URL : Openness in Scholarship: A Return to Core Values?

« Pour commencer, pourriez-vous définir ‘données de la recherche’ ? » Une tentative de réponse

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Auteurs/Authors : Joachim Schöpfel, Eric Kergosien, Hélène Prost

Le projet D4Humanities s’inscrit dans le champ des Humanités numériques – comment permettre l’exploration des données de la recherche en SHS (corpus textuels ou oraux, données brutes, images…) avec des techniques numériques (text and data mining, cartographie, visualisation…) afin de construire un sens nouveau ?

Il s’inscrit dans la continuité des travaux du laboratoire GERiiCO et de ses partenaires à l’Université de Lille Sciences Humaines et Sociales (SCD, ED SHS, ANRT…) avec comme objectif d’accélérer la démarche des données de la recherche notamment par rapport aux doctorants et jeunes chercheurs, et de faciliter le montage d’un projet de recherche international.

En particulier, le projet contient trois volets : (1) Pratiques et besoins dans le domaine des données de la recherche (enquête qualitative des comportements, attitudes, motivations et besoins par rapport à la gestion et au partage des données de la recherche) ; (2) workflow pour le dépôt des données des doctorants en SHS (dépôt, préservation et diffusion des données via le service NAKALA de la TGIR Huma-Num) ; (3) recherche sur les données et les thèses (concept et typologie des données en SHS ; évolution des contenus, formats, structures et prescriptions des thèses dans l’environnement de l’Open Science).

Le projet sera mené avec l’ISN Oldenburg et d’autres partenaires étrangers ; il facilitera la création d’un consortium et le montage d’un projet de recherche dans les Humanités numériques sur les thèses de doctorat de l’avenir, avec un financement européen (H2020) ou franco-allemand (ANR/DFG).

Cette communication présente les grandes lignes de l’étude sur les données de l’axe 3, c’est-à-dire l’analyse du concept de données de la recherche, pour mieux cerner l’identification (granularité), pour mieux comprendre la distinction et les relations entre données primaires et secondaires et pour affiner la catégorisation des données en SHS. L’accent est mis sur une triple approche, conceptuelle, typologique et fonctionnelle.

URL : http://hal.univ-lille3.fr/hal-01530937