Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: An Institutional Case Study Demonstrating Why Data Digital Libraries Are Not the Whole Answer to E-Research

Abstract

Swinburne Research Bank http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au McKay, D. (2010). Oranges are not the only fruit: an institutional case study demonstrating why data digital libraries are not the whole answer to e-research.

Bend me, shape me: A practical experience of repurposing research data

“…This dataset was discovered serendipitously on a mailing list; this is in contrast to what has been suggested in the literature [4,19]. Funding bodies and government organisations propose that data will be discoverable in digital libraries-for some disciplines, such as astrophysics, this is already the case.…”

“…In the typical data re-use scenario, one of two things happens: either data is deposited into a discipline-based data repository, or the data is identified during collegial discussion and its re-use negotiated from there [19]. The ideal scenario according to the government objectives outlined above is that data is readily findable in a digital library or aggregator.…”

“…This extra work is a direct consequence of re-purposing the data, and it seems likely that any data re-purposing would require some of this sort of work. The time cost of this work, however, is a reason given by academics for avoiding data re-use; they would rather collect their own fit-for-purpose data in many cases [19].…”

“…These digital libraries were not without their problems. Content recruitment proved problematic in some disciplines, as researchers were concerned about ethical implications and extracting maximum value from the data before sharing [6,19]. It was also, once content was recruited, difficult to describe it in such a way that it would be discoverable: there is not yet a consistent approach to using metadata to describe datasets yet it is widely acknowledged that good metadata is key to successful dataset discovery, sharing and re-use [5,10,14].…”

“…Despite these repositories existing, there is little information on what it is like to reuse data outside those disciplines where it has long been commonplace (for example astrophysics [19]). There is a single case study of re-using qualitative data, but nothing about re-purposing data [25].…”