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Selected Works

Christine L. Borgman

Articles 1 - 30 of 108

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Big Data, Little Data, Or No Data? Scholarship And Stewardship, Christine L. Borgman Dec 2017

Big Data, Little Data, Or No Data? Scholarship And Stewardship, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

UCLA Library & Information Studies Alumni Association
Saturday, December 9, 2017 at 2pm

While the popularity of “big data” reflects the growth of data-intensive research, “little data” remains the norm in those many fields where evidence is scarce and labor-intensive to acquire. Until recently, data was considered part of the process of scholarship, essential but largely invisible. In the “big data” era, data have become valuable products to be captured, shared, reused, and stewarded for the long term. They also have become contentious intellectual property to be protected. Public policy leans toward open access to research data, but rarely provides …

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If Data Sharing Is The Answer, What Is The Question?, Christine L. Borgman Nov 2017

If Data Sharing Is The Answer, What Is The Question?, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Data sharing has become normative policy enforced by governments, funding agencies, journals, and other stakeholders. Reasons for data sharing include leveraging investments in research, reducing the need to collect new data, addressing new research questions by reusing or combining extant data, and reproducing research, which would lead to greater accountability, transparency, and less fraud. Much of the scholarship on data practices attempts to understand the sociotechnical barriers to sharing, with goals to design infrastructures, policies, and cultural interventions that will overcome these barriers. Yet data sharing and reuse are common practice in only a few fields. Astronomy and genomics in …

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Open Data, Trust, And Stewardship: Universities At The Privacy Frontier, Christine L. Borgman Nov 2017

Open Data, Trust, And Stewardship: Universities At The Privacy Frontier, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, Tenth Annual Berkeley Law Privacy Lecture

Video available at Berkeley's Box Channel.

Two policy trends in access to data are beginning to clash, raising new challenges for universities and for individual faculty, students, and staff. One trend is for researchers to provide open access to their data as a condition for obtaining grant funding or publishing results in journals. The other trend is for universities to accumulate vast amounts of data about the activities of their communities in research, teaching, learning, services, and administration. Many of these data, both research and operational, fall …

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Faculty Engagement To Reduce Pii (Personally Identifiable Information) Risk, Christine L. Borgman, David G. Kay Jun 2017

Faculty Engagement To Reduce Pii (Personally Identifiable Information) Risk, Christine L. Borgman, David G. Kay

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

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Big Data, Little Data, Or No Data? Knowledge Infrastructures For The Earth Sciences, Christine L. Borgman Jun 2017

Big Data, Little Data, Or No Data? Knowledge Infrastructures For The Earth Sciences, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

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The Challenges Of Reproducibility In Data-Scarce Fields, Christine L. Borgman, Peter T. Darch May 2017

The Challenges Of Reproducibility In Data-Scarce Fields, Christine L. Borgman, Peter T. Darch

Christine L. Borgman

Reproducing scientific results is difficult in fields whose research is characterized by large volumes of data, computationally intensive methods, and high degrees of standardization. In data scarce fields, which characterizes much of the earth sciences, reproducing results is even more challenging. Among the factors that limit reproducibility are data access, collection, curation, and accessibility. We discuss the extent to which reproducibility is an appropriate goal in data scarce domains and the tradeoffs between data reuse and reproducibility.

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Why Data Sharing And Reuse Are Hard To Do, Christine L. Borgman, Irene V. Pasquetto Apr 2017

Why Data Sharing And Reuse Are Hard To Do, Christine L. Borgman, Irene V. Pasquetto

Christine L. Borgman

Researchers are producing an unprecedented amount of data by using new methods and instrumentation. By accessing and reusing these data, scientists can answer complex research problems that need systemic approaches to knowledge discovery. However, research data are often not readily available, and even when data are shared, they cannot be reused outside their original context of production. Based on our studies of data practices in science, we compare data sharing and reuse challenges faced by researchers in life sciences, oceanography, astronomy, molecular biology, and genomics. Data sharing difficulties include determining what to release, when, in what format, and by what …

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On The Reuse Of Scientific Data, Irene V. Pasquetto, Bernadette M. Randles, Christine L. Borgman Mar 2017

On The Reuse Of Scientific Data, Irene V. Pasquetto, Bernadette M. Randles, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

While science policy promotes data sharing and open data, these are not ends in themselves. Arguments for data sharing are to reproduce research, to make public assets available to the public, to leverage investments in research, and to advance research and innovation. To achieve these expected benefits of data sharing, data must actually be reused by others. Data sharing practices, especially motivations and incentives, have received far more study than has data reuse, perhaps because of the array of contested concepts on which reuse rests and the disparate contexts in which it occurs. Here we explicate concepts of data, sharing, …

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Users And Uses Of A Digital Data Archive: A Case Study Of Dans, Christine L. Borgman, Ashley E. Sands, Milena S. Golshan Feb 2017

Users And Uses Of A Digital Data Archive: A Case Study Of Dans, Christine L. Borgman, Ashley E. Sands, Milena S. Golshan

Christine L. Borgman

As open access to research data becomes a requirement of funding agencies and journals, digital data archives are the preferred mechanisms for data sharing and reuse. While institutional policies support data sharing, surprisingly little is known about the uses and users of digital data archives, and about the relationships between users and the staff of data archives. Digital data archives, however, vary widely in organizational structure, mission, collection, funding, and relationships to their users and other stakeholders. We present a case study of DANS, the Data Archiving and Networked Services of the Netherlands, with the goal of analyzing the uses, …

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Big Data, Little Data, Or No Data? Sustaining Access To Research Data, Christine L. Borgman Jan 2017

Big Data, Little Data, Or No Data? Sustaining Access To Research Data, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

The Southern California Climate Data Protection Project is committed to protecting and preserving scientific climate data, through systematic analysis of infrastructures and methods of data collection, curation, and management. We are equally concerned with how access to scientific data allows the public to invest in government accountability and to demand sustainable policies.

This workshop on Inauguration Day was on political action to sustain access to essential data on climate change.
Date: 9am-3pm, January 20, 2017
Location: Department of Information Studies, GSEIS Room 111, UCLA
290 Charles E Young Dr N, Los Angeles, CA 90095

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Privacy And Information Technology, Christine L. Borgman Dec 2016

Privacy And Information Technology, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Privacy is a broad topic that covers many disciplines, stakeholders, and concerns. This course addresses the intersection of privacy and information technology, surveying a wide array of topics of concern for research and practice in the information fields. Among the topics covered are the history and changing contexts of privacy; privacy risks and harms; law, policies, and practices; privacy in searching for information, in reading, and in libraries; surveillance, networks, and privacy by design; information privacy of students; uses of learning analytics; privacy associated with government data, at all levels of government; information security, cyber risk; and how privacy and …

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Motivations For Sharing And Reusing Data:#11; Complexities And Contradictions In The Use Of A Digital Data Archive#0;, Christine L. Borgman, Andrea Scharnhorst, Henk Van Den Berg, Ashley E. Sands, Milena S. Golshan, Andrew Treloar Oct 2016

Motivations For Sharing And Reusing Data:#11; Complexities And Contradictions In The Use Of A Digital Data Archive#0;, Christine L. Borgman, Andrea Scharnhorst, Henk Van Den Berg, Ashley E. Sands, Milena S. Golshan, Andrew Treloar

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

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Rethinking Scholarship: Data Analytics In Chinese Buddhist Philology, Christine L. Borgman Aug 2016

Rethinking Scholarship: Data Analytics In Chinese Buddhist Philology, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Data may construct reality or vice versa. From an epistemological perspective, data are representations of observations, objects, or other entities used as evidence of phenomena for the purposes of research or scholarship. Thus, almost anything can be considered data in the humanities; it is the act of using something as evidence that creates data. This talk is drawn from a case study of a Chinese Buddhist philologist whose scholarship employs evidence from all manner of material objects and digital resources to study the communication of Buddhist texts c. 3rd to 5th century C.E. His early work with digital objects and …

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Big Data, Little Data, No Data – Who Is In Charge Of Data Quality?, Christine L. Borgman, Andrea Scharnhorst May 2016

Big Data, Little Data, No Data – Who Is In Charge Of Data Quality?, Christine L. Borgman, Andrea Scharnhorst

Christine L. Borgman

The more value that is placed on research data as a commodity to be shared, sustained, and reused, the greater the need to assure the quality of those data. Data repositories—whether domain-specific or generic across domains—are essential gatekeepers of data sustainability. Data quality is a consideration throughout the research process. To what extent should responsibility for assuring data quality be the responsibility of the investigators; of publishers, editors, and peer reviewers; of data repositories; of data librarians or data scientists; or of later reusers of those data? Considerations for data quality vary throughout the lifecycle of data handling. These questions …

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When And Why Should Research Data Be Sustained?, Christine Borgman Dec 2015

When And Why Should Research Data Be Sustained?, Christine Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

The goal of the workshop was to create a forum for direct interaction between the National Science Foundation large facilities and CI developer community – to explore evolving facility needs and approaches for CI, identify issues and solutions, exchange CI best practices and operational experience, and generate recommendations that can guide current and future NSF CI programs.

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Creating, Collaborating, And Celebrating The Diversity Of Research Data, Christine L. Borgman Oct 2015

Creating, Collaborating, And Celebrating The Diversity Of Research Data, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

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Syllabus For Phd Seminar On Research Methods And Design, Christine L. Borgman Aug 2015

Syllabus For Phd Seminar On Research Methods And Design, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

This is the core PhD seminar in research design for the Department of Information Studies, covering a range of social science research methods for studying human behavior. It follows, or is offered concurrently with, 291A, Theoretical Traditions In Information Studies. Graduate students in Information Studies or related fields (education, communication, public policy, management, psychology, etc.) who have not taken 291A but who have extensive background in epistemology or research methods may enroll with instructor’s permission. Also prerequisite is at least one course in descriptive and inferential statistics.
The course is conducted as a workshop, drawing upon students’ research projects as …

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Data Citation And Scholarship, Christine Borgman Aug 2015

Data Citation And Scholarship, Christine Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

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Knowledge Infrastructures In Science: Data, Diversity, And Digital Libraries, Christine L. Borgman, Darch T. Peter, Sands E. Ashley, Pasquetto V. Irene, Golshan S. Milena, Wallis C. Jillian, Traweek Sharon Jul 2015

Knowledge Infrastructures In Science: Data, Diversity, And Digital Libraries, Christine L. Borgman, Darch T. Peter, Sands E. Ashley, Pasquetto V. Irene, Golshan S. Milena, Wallis C. Jillian, Traweek Sharon

Christine L. Borgman

Digital libraries can be deployed at many points throughout the life cycles of scientific research projects from their inception through data collection, analysis, documentation, publication, curation, preservation, and stewardship. Requirements for digital libraries to manage research data vary along many dimensions, including life cycle, scale, research domain, and types and degrees of openness. This article addresses the role of digital libraries in knowledge infrastructures for science, presenting evidence from long-term studies of four research sites. Findings are based on interviews (n=208), ethnographic fieldwork, document analysis, and historical archival research about scientific data practices, conducted over the course of more than …

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Data, Digital Scholarship, And Dans, Christine L. Borgman Jun 2015

Data, Digital Scholarship, And Dans, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

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Dataverse In The Universe Of Data, Christine Borgman Jun 2015

Dataverse In The Universe Of Data, Christine Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Data repositories are much more than "black boxes" where data go in but may never come out. Rather, they are situated in communities, with contributors, users, reusers, and repository staff who may engage actively or passively with participants. This talk will explore the roles that Dataverse plays – or could play – in individual communities.

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Data, Data Everywhere — But How To Manage And Govern?, Christine Borgman Jun 2015

Data, Data Everywhere — But How To Manage And Govern?, Christine Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Universities are drowning in data, not only data produced by their researchers and students, but also data they collect about their communities. Research data are subject to sharing and retention requirements by funding agencies and journals. Data from course management systems, faculty personnel records, security cameras, and social media are being used as indicators for decision making. This talk will identify some of the challenges faced by universities in managing and governing these complex categories of data. Material is drawn from Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World (Borgman, 2015, MIT Press) and the UCLA Data …

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Data, Management, And Digital Science, Christine Borgman Jun 2015

Data, Management, And Digital Science, Christine Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

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Why Data Are Not Publications: Potential Potholes For Stm Publishers, Christine L. Borgman Apr 2015

Why Data Are Not Publications: Potential Potholes For Stm Publishers, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Research data have become scholarly objects in their own right, to be released, shared, and reused. “Data publishing” has become a popular metaphor for dissemination activities. While metaphors can provide useful analogies, they also can be misleading. This one is particularly problematic because it equates research data with publications such as journal articles. Journal articles are a genre that evolved over a period of several centuries as a way to make scholarly arguments, whereas data are the evidence that support those arguments. Efforts to transfer publication practices such as bibliographic citation and altmetrics to data are based on risky assumptions …

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Big Data And Little Data Across The Disciplines, Christine L. Borgman Mar 2015

Big Data And Little Data Across The Disciplines, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Big data offer a wealth of research opportunities across the scholarly disciplines. Little data similarly offer depth of investigation within and between fields. However, having the right data is usually better than having more data. Enthusiasm for data-driven research is obscuring the complexity and diversity of data in scholarship and the challenges for stewardship. Data practices are local, varying from field to field, individual to individual, and country to country. Inside the black box of data is a plethora of research, technology, and policy issues. Data are best understood as representations of observations, objects, or other entities used as evidence …

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Why Are Data Sharing And Reuse So Difficult?, Christine L. Borgman Jan 2015

Why Are Data Sharing And Reuse So Difficult?, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

View a video of the presentation at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUd39dGMshY&list=PLDMGHArLApSDMMscKU42MmDVs6X026aof&index=7

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New Models Of Privacy For The University, Christine L. Borgman, Kent Wada, James F. Davis Dec 2014

New Models Of Privacy For The University, Christine L. Borgman, Kent Wada, James F. Davis

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

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The Knowledge Infrastructure Of Astronomy, Christine L. Borgman Oct 2014

The Knowledge Infrastructure Of Astronomy, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

Big data, data-intensive science, and eScience are contemporary terms to describe research fields that generate, manipulate, and manage large volumes of data. Astronomy was among the first data-intensive fields, hence many other domains wish to learn from the experience of astronomers. Their knowledge infrastructure – an ecology of people, practices, technologies, institutions, material objects, and relationships – has accumulated over millennia. Over the last several decades, the practice of astronomy has transitioned from analog to digital technologies. In turn, the broad adoption of common tools, standards, and technologies has enabled astronomers to construct infrastructure components such as the Astrophysics Data …

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Data Scholarship In The Humanities, Christine L. Borgman Oct 2014

Data Scholarship In The Humanities, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

No abstract provided.

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Big Data, Little Data, Open Data, And Scholarship, Christine L. Borgman Sep 2014

Big Data, Little Data, Open Data, And Scholarship, Christine L. Borgman

Christine L. Borgman

The enthusiasm for big data is obscuring the complexity and diversity of data in scholarship and the challenges for stewardship. Data practices are local, varying from field to field, individual to individual, and country to country. They are a lens to observe the rapidly changing landscape of scholarly work in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Inside the black box of data is a plethora of research, technology, and policy issues. Data are best understood as representations of observations, objects, or other entities used as evidence of phenomena for the purposes of research or scholarship. Rarely do they stand …

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