Data narratives: Increasing scholarly value

Abstract

Data narratives or data stories have emerged as a new form of the scholarly communication focused on data. In this paper, we explore the potential value of data narratives and the requirements for data stories to enhance scholarly communication. We examine three types of data stories that form a continuum from the less to the more structured: the DataONE data stories, the Data Curation Profiles, and the Data Descriptors from the journal Scientific Data. We take the position that these data stories will increase the value of scholarly communication if they are linked to the datasets and to the publications that describe results, and have instructional value.

Patterns in Award Winning Data Storytelling

“…Despite this paucity, there are a few notable publications on data storytelling (Segel and Heer 2010) and (Lee et al 2015) which identify core elements and rigorously describe the design space for data stories and narrative visualisations. Other works have attempted to prescribe good data story practices (Alexander and Vetere 2011) and analysed concrete data storytelling practices (Pouchard, Barton, and Zilinski 2014). In addition, few practitioner-directed articles such as (Stikeleather 2013) that have sought to contribute good storytelling practices.…”