Examining landscapes of research data management services in academic libraries is timely and significant for both those libraries on the front line and the libraries that are already ahead. While it provides overall understanding of where the research data management program is at and where it is going, it also provides understanding of current practices and data management recommendations and/or tool adoptions as well as revealing areas of improvement and support. This study examined the research data (management) services in academic libraries in the United States through a content analysis of 185 library websites, with four main areas of focus: service, information, education, and network. The results from the content analysis of these webpages reveals that libraries need to advance and engage more actively to provide services, supply information online, and develop educational services. There is also a wide variation among library data management services and programs according to their web presence.
12 September 2017 in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
This study explores the factors that influence the data reuse behaviors of scientists and identifies the generalized patterns that occur in data reuse across various disciplines. This research employed an integrated theoretical framework combining institutional theory and the theory of planned behavior. The combined theoretical framework can apply the institutional theory at the individual level and extend the theory of planned behavior by including relevant contexts. This study utilized a survey method to test the proposed research model and hypotheses. Study participants were recruited from the Community of Science's (CoS) Scholar Database, and a total of 1,528 scientists responded to the survey. A multilevel analysis method was used to analyze the 1,237 qualified responses. This research showed that scientists' data reuse intentions are influenced by both disciplinary level factors (availability of data repositories) and individual level factors (perceived usefulness, perceived concern, and the availability of internal resources). This study has practical implications for promoting data reuse practices. Three main areas that need to be improved are identified: Educating scientists, providing internal supports, and providing external resources and supports such as data repositories.
3 June 2016 in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Data reuse refers to the secondary use of data—not for its original purpose but for studying new problems. Although reusing data might not yet be the norm in every discipline, the benefits of reusing shared data have been asserted by a number of researchers, and data reuse has been a major concern in many disciplines. Assessing data for trustworthiness becomes important in data reuse with the growth in data creation because of the lack of standards for ensuring data quality and potential harm from using poor‐quality data. This research explores many facets of data reusers' trust in data generated by other researchers focusing on the trust judgment process with influential factors that determine reusers' trust. The author took an interpretive qualitative approach by using in‐depth semistructured interviews as the primary research method. The study results suggest different stages of trust development associated with the process of data reuse. Data reusers' trust may remain the same throughout their experiences, but it can also be formed, lost, declined, and recovered during their data reuse experiences. These various stages reflect the dynamic nature of trust.
1 July 2017 in Library & Information Science Research
Many disciplines within the social sciences have a dynamic culture of sharing and reusing data. Because social science data differ from data in the hard sciences, it is necessary to explicitly examine social science data reuse. This study explores the data reuse behaviors of social scientists in order to better understand both the factors that influence those social scientists' intentions to reuse data and the extent to which those factors influence actual data reuse. Using an integrated theoretical model developed from the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the technology acceptance model (TAM), this study provides a broad explanation of the relationships among factors influencing social scientists' data reuse. A total of 292 survey responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings suggest that social scientists' data reuse intentions are directly influenced by the subjective norm of data reuse, attitudes toward data reuse, and perceived effort involved in data reuse. Attitude toward data reuse mediated social scientists' intentions to reuse data, leading to the indirect influence of the perceived usefulness and perceived concern of data reuse, as well as the indirect influence of the subjective norm of data reuse. Finally, the availability of a data repository indirectly influenced social scientists' intentions to reuse data by reducing the perceived effort involved
14 June 2013 in International Journal of Digital Curation
ISO 16363:2012, Space Data and Information Transfer Systems - Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories (ISO TRAC), outlines actions a repository can take to be considered trustworthy, but research examining whether the repository’s designated community of users associates such actions with trustworthiness has been limited. Drawing from this ISO document and the management and information systems literatures, this paper discusses findings from interviews with 66 archaeologists and quantitative social scientists. We found similarities and differences across the disciplines and among the social scientists. Both disciplinary communities associated trust with a repository’s transparency. However, archaeologists mentioned guarantees of preservation and sustainability more frequently than the social scientists, who talked about institutional reputation. Repository processes were also linked to trust, with archaeologists more frequently citing metadata issues and social scientists discussing data selection and cleaning processes. Among the social scientists, novices mentioned the influence of colleagues on their trust in repositories almost twice as much as the experts. We discuss the implications our findings have for identifying trustworthy repositories and how they extend the models presented in the management and information systems literatures.
While repositories’ efforts to build trustworthy digital repositories (TDRs) led to the establishment of ISO standards, much less research has been done regarding the user’s side, despite calls for an understanding of users’ trust of TDRs. In order to learn about users’ perspectives on trust in digital repositories, the present study investigated users’ definitions of trust and factors that influence users’ trust development, particularly addressing the users of three data repositories in the United States. A total of 19 participants were interviewed in this study. The results of this study indicate that users’ definition of trust is largely based on a lack of deception, when it comes down to the specific context of data repositories. Regarding factors influencing the development of users’ trust in repositories, organizational attributes, user communities (recommendations and frequent use), past experiences, repository processes (documentation, data cleaning, and quality checking), and users’ perception of the repository roles were identified.