Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Reproducibility: Gold Or Fool’S Gold In Digital Social Research?, Christine Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Data sharing has become a core tenet of science policy in the U.K., U.S., and elsewhere. Among the rationales for sharing data is improving the ability to reproduce or to replicate research. Reproducibility is an oft-stated “gold standard” for science, yet it is a problematic rationale for sharing research data. Sociologists of science have described the difficulties of verifying, let alone reproducing, scientific results, since the 1970s. While most sciences are experiencing a data deluge, the characteristics and practices associated with data vary widely, with different requirements for replication. Reproducibility concerns underlie peer review, identification of fraud, bio-security, and publication …

Syllabus For Data, Data Practices, And Data Curation Part 1; Winter 2012, Christine Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

Data, Data Use, And Scientific Inquiry: Two Case Studies Of Data Practices, Laura Wynholds, Jillian Wallis, Christine Borgman, Ashley Sands, Sharon Traweek

Christine L. Borgman

Data are proliferating far faster than they can be captured, managed, or stored. What types of data are most likely to be used and reused, by whom, and for what purposes? Answers to these questions will inform information policy and the design of digital libraries.

We report findings from semi-structured interviews and field observations to investigate characteristics of data use and reuse and how those characteristics vary within and between scientific communities. The two communities studied are researchers at the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS) and users of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data. The data practices of …