Findable and reusable? Data discovery practices in research

TY - THES

T1 - Findable and reusable? Data discovery practices in research

AU - Gregory, Kathleen

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - The reuse of research data is heralded as having the potential to increase effectiveness, productivity, and reproducibility in science. Stakeholders from funders to systems designers work to create policies, repositories and tools to support and encourage opening and sharing data. An assumption underlying this work is that data will be reused if they are shared. Another assumption predicating reuse is that data will be discovered by researchers, although relatively little empirical work exists to support this assumption. This dissertation presents empirical research about the practices involved in discovering data, examining what researchers across disciplines are actually doing as they find, make sense of and use data which they have not created. It brings together perspectives from information science (IS), computer science (CS) and science and technology studies (STS) to examine these practices with the aim of informing and intervening into the design of search solutions for research data.

AB - The reuse of research data is heralded as having the potential to increase effectiveness, productivity, and reproducibility in science. Stakeholders from funders to systems designers work to create policies, repositories and tools to support and encourage opening and sharing data. An assumption underlying this work is that data will be reused if they are shared. Another assumption predicating reuse is that data will be discovered by researchers, although relatively little empirical work exists to support this assumption. This dissertation presents empirical research about the practices involved in discovering data, examining what researchers across disciplines are actually doing as they find, make sense of and use data which they have not created. It brings together perspectives from information science (IS), computer science (CS) and science and technology studies (STS) to examine these practices with the aim of informing and intervening into the design of search solutions for research data.

U2 - 10.26481/dis.20210302kg

DO - 10.26481/dis.20210302kg

M3 - PhD thesis

ER -