Not by metadata alone: the use of diverse forms of knowledge to locate data for reuse

Zimmerman, Ann

doi:10.1007/s00799-007-0015-8

Cited by 146 publications

(163 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

158

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Second, there is a small culture of data sharing and archiving in ecology, compared to disciplines such as genomics, physics, and other sciences (McCain 1991, Nelson 2009, Hampton et al 2012Hampton et al, in press). Ecological data are diverse, consisting of many small, unique data sets that were collected using varied methods (NRC 1995, Bowker 2000, Michener et al 2007, Zimmerman 2007. This lack of standardization makes data harder to interpret and integrate (Zimmerman 2008) and more costly to manage, but should not be considered sufficient reason to avoid data sharing.…”

Section: Focus On Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

The fractured lab notebook: undergraduates and ecological data management training in the United States

Strasser

Hampton

2012

Ecosphere

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Data management is a timely and increasingly important topic for ecologists. Recent funder mandates requiring data management plans, combined with the data deluge that faces scientists, make education about data management critical for any future ecologist. In this study, we surveyed instructors of general ecology courses at 48 major institutions in the United States. We chose instructors at institutions that are likely to train future ecologists, and therefore, are most likely to influence the trajectory of data management education in this field. The survey queried instructors about institution and course characteristics, the extent to which data-related topics are included in their courses, the barriers to their teaching these topics, and their own personal beliefs and values associated with data management and stewardship. We found that, in general, data management topics are not being covered in undergraduate ecology courses for a wide range of reasons. Most often, instructors cited a lack of time and a lack of resources as barriers to teaching data management. Although data are used for instruction at some point in the majority of the courses surveyed, good data management practices and a thorough understanding of the importance of data stewardship are not being taught. We offer potential explanations for this and suggestions for improvement.

show abstract

Section: Focus On Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

The fractured lab notebook: undergraduates and ecological data management training in the United States

Strasser

Hampton

2012

Ecosphere

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These datasets persisted, not because of their high quality or uniqueness, but simply because they were easy to access, most team members knew of their existence by a generic name, and the errors that the data did contain were likely to have known "work-arounds". Reuse of data with known problems is not unique to enterprise-level data practices (Zimmerman, 2007), but a dataset being archived in multiple locations so that it would become "known" to collaborators diverges from many previous studies of data practices (e.g. Cragin et al '2010).…”

Section: Discovery Is a Mechanism For Quality Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extending Curation Profiles to Study Enterprise-level Data Practices

Weber¹,

Palmer²

2014

iConference 2014 Proceedings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This poster presents preliminary work in adapting a 'curation profiles' approach to study data practices in a corporate enterprise setting. We outline important similarities and differences between the curation of basic vs. applied research data and present preliminary findings from a pilot study with design engineers at a multi-national corporation that manufactures heavy machinery. We show that reproducibility, quality vs. value, and that discovery-driven quality control are key areas for the development of new curation services in this sector. We conclude with some future directions for extending the curation profiles project to new data-intensive workplace settings.

show abstract

“…Ecological data specifically involves highly complex tasks of collection and categorization that are inherent to the domain of environmental sciences (Roth andBowen 1999, 2001;Zimmerman 2007Zimmerman , 2008.…”

Section: A Metadata Standard For the Ecological Sciencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making an Issue out of a Standard

Millerand

Ribes

Baker

et al. 2012

Science, Technology, & Human Values

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The article focuses on stories and storytelling practices as explanatory resources in standardization processes. It draws upon an ethnographic study of the development of a technical standard for data sharing in an ecological research community, where participants struggle to articulate the difficulties encountered in implementing the standard. Building from C. Wright Mills' classic distinction between private troubles and public issues, the authors follow the development of a story as it comes to assist in transforming individual troubles in standard implementation into an institutional issue for the 1 ecological scientific community. The authors present the ''hands-on'' social science collaboration in this study as an example of a mechanism for supporting institutionalization of issues. Finally, the authors argue that narratives can serve as effective organizing principles within institutional settings, thereby providing an approach to understand the practical, substantive difficulties that occur in work with data in the sciences. Keywords stories, sensemaking, standards, intervention, trouble, issueNasreddin sat on a river bank when someone shouted to him from the opposite side: ''Hey! how do I get across?'' ''You are across!'' Nasreddin shouted back.Between 1997 and 2001, a team of information technologists at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) initiated and carried through the first stages of development for the Ecological Metadata Language (EML). The introduction of the standard would serve as a groundbreaking event in ecology, promising to facilitate the interdisciplinary sharing of data sets and new avenues for large-scale collaborations in ecological research. As a ''universal'' language by which standardized descriptions of ecological data could be produced, data would circulate and be shared across disciplinary fields and laboratories. In 2001, the standard was officially adopted by one of the largest research communities in ecology. This adoption marked the high point in a ''success story'' of datastandard development in the sciences.However, individual research sites within the Network had difficulty using the standard when tagging actual ecological data. In particular, information managers, who were tasked with the responsibility of the majority of the work in implementation began to report troubles. It was found that contrary to an idealized image of a ''universal'' language, individual research sites have their own ways of naming, classifying, and organizing their data, making use of specific terminologies and measurement units that were not accommodated by the new standard.Over time, a new story of the standard and the standardization process has begun to emerge within the Network. In this story, the standard is not yet a success, substantial work in implementation remains, and doing this work requires changes to the standard itself, along with renewed access to human resources and time. We ask: What happened in this process of implementation of a standar...

show abstract

Not by metadata alone: the use of diverse forms of knowledge to locate data for reuse

Cited by 146 publications

References 21 publications

The fractured lab notebook: undergraduates and ecological data management training in the United States

The fractured lab notebook: undergraduates and ecological data management training in the United States

Extending Curation Profiles to Study Enterprise-level Data Practices

Making an Issue out of a Standard

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About