Preserving the Essence: Identifying the Significant Properties of Social Science Research Data

Recker, Astrid; Müller, Stefan

doi:10.1080/13614576.2015.1110404

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Because an instrument can be kept for many years, electronically generated music has diverse supports that need to be maintained for content later. In most cases, the extraction of music from its original format, known as migration, can result in losing some significant properties (Recker and Müller 2015). For instance, if the files of a dataset of bird sounds in tropical forest are altered (Ulloa et al 2016), this means changes in significant properties.…”

Section: Digital Preservation Of Datasets In a Special Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dataset Management as a Special Collection

Boté

2019

Collection Management

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Dataset Management as a Special Collection IntroductionUniversity libraries face numerous issues regarding access to special collections, including datasets.Dataset licensing varies considerably, such as in terms of copyright or creative commons. These are issues that must be resolved in the coming years. Indeed, at present, datasets are scattered across different places and, depending on the topic in question, licences and retrieval can be difficult. Moreover, given challenges of access and manipulation, the inclusion of datasets in special collections can become a daunting task. Datasets are included in special collections if they are specialised, pertain to the collection's content, have research values or are old legacy formats that add value to the university library. Finally, they offer the possibility of generating new data if reused with adequate technology. Special collections are characterised by their uniqueness, fragility, value, rarity and the difficulty of finding similar collections elsewhere. Typically, special collections were restricted to small portions of population, separated from the main library collection as a whole, and used for research or instruction (Tam 2017). Since the creation of the World Wide Web, libraries have used outreach projects to disseminate their special collections through their catalogues.A virtual collection can offer numerous benefits to researchers, solving problems such as accessibility or findability, and providing innovative means of researching, teaching and learning, according to the Special Collections Working Group established by Association of Research Libraries (ARL) (Prochaska 2009). Virtual catalogues have removed geographical distance barriers and opening hours, and have expanded research and access to rare materials (Doi 2015), as well as presenting hidden material that no longer exists in the library catalogue (Tam 2017). Such materials have become digitised, with hard copies available in the library in case of an information technology (IT) failure. Nevertheless, digital special collections have always raised significant questions, affected by politics, legal requirements and technological solutions (Prochaska 2009).A specific question arises when materials are not digitised but are instead digitally born and are to be included in special collections. In 2011, Goldman found that institutions had not created policies to protect digital materials and their properties (Goldman 2011). Garnett et al. also found that university libraries' special collection protection against disasters is under-researched (Garnett et al. 2018). In most cases, university libraries require IT support; special collections that are made available online must be treated carefully in order that the information presented is complete. Therefore, the very definition of a special digital collection becomes undefined, owing to the nature of digital material.The definition of a special collection with born-digital material differs from a collection of analogue materials. In fact, Procha...

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Section: Digital Preservation Of Datasets In a Special Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dataset Management as a Special Collection

Boté

2019

Collection Management

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“…Its accessibility and understandability depend on storage media, hard-and software environments and formats. In order to preserve digital objects such as the desired documentation of a data collection process for the long term, they need to be constantly altered and, for example, file formats require constant updating (Recker and Mu¨ller, 2015). Archives ensure long-term preservation in a continuous process of data curation.…”

Section: Sharing For Reproducibility In Specialized Archivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Required information about the social science research process includes how, when and why data was created and details of how it was processed and analyzed. In the case of survey data intended to be preserved for re-use by quantitative social scientists who want to test hypotheses, it is required that contextual information such as the composition of the target population and the selection of respondents is preserved as well as the data itself (Recker and Mu¨ller, 2015). When archiving a geotagged Twitter dataset, we are addressing a different target audience, namely computational social scientists as well as other social media researchers; a different type of data, namely geotagged Twitter data; and potentially more diverse methodologies that we need to make allowances for.…”

Section: Current Approaches To Sharing Datasets Collected From Twittermentioning

confidence: 99%

Archiving information from geotagged tweets to promote reproducibility and comparability in social media research

2017

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Sharing social media research datasets allows for reproducibility and peer-review, but it is very often difficult or even impossible to achieve due to legal restrictions and can also be ethically questionable. What is more, research data repositories and other research infrastructure and research support institutions are only starting to target social media researchers. In this paper, we present a practical solution to sharing social media data with the help of a social science data archive. Our aim is to contribute to the effort of enhancing comparability and reproducibility in social media research by taking some first steps towards setting standards for sustainable data archiving. We present a showcase for sharing social media data with the example of a big dataset containing geotagged tweets (several months of continued geotagged tweets from the United States from 2014 and 2015; nearly half a billion tweets in total) through a research data archive. We provide a general background to the process of long-term archiving of research data. After some consideration of the current obstacles for sharing and archiving social media data, we present our solution of archiving the specific dataset of geotagged tweets at the GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences, a publicly funded German data archive for secure and long-term archiving of social science data. We archived and documented tweet IDs and additional information to improve reproducibility of the initial research while also attending to ethical and legal considerations, and taking into account Twitter's terms of service in particular.

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The Effect of Protection of Personal Information Act No. 4 of 2013 on Research Data Ethics in South Africa

Netshakhuma

2022

Global Perspectives on Information Security Regulations

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This study aims to assess the effect of the Protection of Personal Information Act No. 4 of 2013 on research data ethics in South Africa. The Protection of Personal information Act No 4 of 2013 includes a clause on protection of confidentiality and privacy during the collection of data. This research recommends universities to develop privacy data policy and records management policy to improve compliance with the legislation. Furthermore, training and awareness of staff on data ethics is necessary in universities. The research ethics committees are to be established to provide advice on conducting of research in South African universities.

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Preserving the Essence: Identifying the Significant Properties of Social Science Research Data

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Dataset Management as a Special Collection

Dataset Management as a Special Collection

Archiving information from geotagged tweets to promote reproducibility and comparability in social media research

The Effect of Protection of Personal Information Act No. 4 of 2013 on Research Data Ethics in South Africa

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