Spatially Explicit Data: Stewardship and Ethical Challenges in Science

Scholarly communication is at an unprecedented turning point created in part by the increasing saliency of data stewardship and data sharing. Formal data management plans represent a new emphasis in research, enabling access to data at higher volumes and more quickly, and the potential for replication and augmentation of existing research. Data sharing has recently transformed the practice, scope, content, and applicability of research in several disciplines, in particular in relation to spatially specific data. This lends exciting potentiality, but the most effective ways in which to implement such changes, particularly for disciplines involving human subjects and other sensitive information, demand consideration. Data management plans, stewardship, and sharing, impart distinctive technical, sociological, and ethical challenges that remain to be adequately identified and remedied. Here, we consider these and propose potential solutions for their amelioration

Untangling knowledge creation and knowledge integration in enterprise wikis

A central challenge organizations face is how to build, store, and maintain knowledge over time. Enterprise wikis are community-based knowledge systems situated in an organizational context. These systems have the potential to play an important role in managing knowledge within organizations, but the motivating factors that drive individuals to contribute their knowledge to these systems is not very well understood. We theorize that enterprise wiki initiatives require two separate and distinct types of knowledge-sharing behaviors to succeed: knowledge creation (KC) and knowledge integration (KI). We examine a Wiki initiative at a major German bank to untangle the motivating factors behind KC and KI. Our results suggest KC and KI are indeed two distinct behaviors, reconcile inconsistent findings from past studies on the role of motivational factors for knowledge sharing to establish shared electronic knowledge resources in organizations, and identify factors that can be leveraged to tilt behaviors in favor of KC or KI

There is a method to it: Making meaning in information research through a mix of paradigms and methods

Author(s) retain copyright, but ASIS & T receives an exclusive publication license The current information environment provides many options for individuals in finding information and acquiring resources. It is increasingly necessary for Information Science (IS) researchers to employ user-centered research methods in order to better identify individuals' information behaviors within their contextual worlds. This panel will provide an overview of some of the novel user-centered research methods being used globally in information research within various contexts. Focusing on some recent innovative projects ranging from information discovery and access, refugee information behaviors, and cyberbullying, to personal health information management, the panel will examine the benefits, challenges, and implications for IS researchers. The panel will have an interactive component for participants to learn how to incorporate new methodologies in innovative ways within their research to make new meaning from their user studies

Preparedness for research data sharing: a study of university researchers in three European countries

Many government and funding bodies around the world have been advocating open access to research data, arguing that such open access can bring a significant degree of economic and social benefit. However, the question remains, do researchers themselves want to share their research data, and even if they do how far they are prepared to make this happen? In this paper we report on an international survey involving university researchers in three countries, viz. UK, France and Turkey. We found that researchers have a number of concerns for data sharing, and in general there is a lack of understanding of the requirements for making data publicly available and accessible. We note that significant training and advocacy will be required to make the vision of data sharing a realit

If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them? Data Sharing and Reuse in the Long Tail of Science and Technology

Research on practices to share and reuse data will inform the design of infrastructure to support data collection, management, and discovery in the long tail of science and technology. These are research domains in which data tend to be local in character, minimally structured, and minimally documented. We report on a ten-year study of the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. We found that CENS researchers are willing to share their data, but few are asked to do so, and in only a few domain areas do their funders or journals require them to deposit data. Few repositories exist to accept data in CENS research areas.. Data sharing tends to occur only through interpersonal exchanges. CENS researchers obtain data from repositories, and occasionally from registries and individuals, to provide context, calibration, or other forms of background for their studies. Neither CENS researchers nor those who request access to CENS data appear to use external data for primary research questions or for replication of studies. CENS researchers are willing to share data if they receive credit and retain first rights to publish their results. Practices of releasing, sharing, and reusing of data in CENS reaffirm the gift culture of scholarship, in which goods are bartered between trusted colleagues rather than treated as commodities