Paper Info
Title
Data, data use, and scientific inquiry: two case studies of data practices
Abstract
Data are proliferating far faster than they can be captured, managed, or stored. What types of data are most likely to be used and reused, by whom, and for what purposes? Answers to these questions will inform information policy and the design of digital libraries. We report findings from semi-structured interviews and field observations to investigate characteristics of data use and reuse and how those characteristics vary within and between scientific communities. The two communities studied are researchers at the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS) and users of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data. The data practices of CENS and SDSS researchers have implications for data curation, system evaluation, and policy. Some data that are important to the conduct of research are not viewed as sufficiently valuable to keep. Other data of great value may not be mentioned or cited, because those data serve only as background to a given investigation. Metrics to assess the value of documents do not map well to data.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1145/2232817.2232822
JCDL
Keywords
Field
DocType
information policy,scientific inquiry,digital library,data curation,network sensing,data practice,sloan digital sky survey,data use,great value,sdss researcher,case study,field observation,scientific data
Data warehouse,Data science,World Wide Web,Computer science,Data sharing,Data management plan,Data curation,Data type,Secondary data,Digital library,Information policy
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
4
1.13
10
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Laura A. Wynholds141.13
Jillian C. Wallis228318.75
Christine L. Borgman31520208.55
Ashley Sands4376.22
Sharon Traweek5615.58