Is the United States Safely Repatriating Unaccompanied Children? Law, Policy, and Return to Guatemala

The United States regularly removes unaccompanied immigrant children and returns them to their countries of origin, with numbers rising rapidly in recent years. The United States has moral and legal obligations to this group of children. Rooted in deep moral underpinnings, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 requires the government to establish policies and procedures to effectuate the safe repatriation of unaccompanied children. However, now more than a decade later, the U.S. government has failed to delineate its practices promoting safe return and, in addition to a general lack of transparency, the scant information available suggests that the United States is not compliant with its duties. This Article evaluates U.S. law and policy governing the repatriation of unaccompanied children, examines whether known policies and procedures comport with applicable law, explores the stark realities and uncertain fates facing children returned to Guatemala, and offers recommendations to bring current practice into conformity with domestic law and social mores

Data Stewardship: Environmental Data Curation and a Web-of-Repositories

Scientific researchers today frequently package measurements and associated metadata as digital datasets in anticipation of storage in data repositories. Through the lens of environmental data stewardship, we consider the data repository as an organizational element central to data curation. One aspect of non-commercial repositories, their distance-from-origin of the data, is explored in terms of near and remote categories. Three idealized repository types are distinguished – local, center, and archive - paralleling research, resource, and reference collection categories respectively. Repository type characteristics such as scope, structure, and goals are discussed. Repository similarities in terms of roles, activities and responsibilities are also examined. Data stewardship is related to care of research data and responsible scientific communication supported by an infrastructure that coordinates curation activities; data curation is defined as a set of repeated and repeatable activities focusing on tending data and creating data products within a particular arena. The concept of “sphere-of-context” is introduced as an aid to distinguishing repository types. Conceptualizing a “web-of-repositories” accommodates a variety of repository types and represents an ecologically inclusive approach to data curation

Planning for Data Management at Emiquon

Current practices and configurations are not sufficient to realize the vision of data as open, accessible, and reuseable resources. In moving from investigations by individual researchers to collaborative scientific partnerships and projects with shared data, information infrastructures are undergoing transition. While data have been central to scientific publications and the production of knowledge, new kinds of data work are required to make field-oriented, environmental scientific data available for shared use. To provide insight into changing data practices and the growth of infrastructure over time, a two-stream model of data production and a reconceptualization of science-data management partnerships are presented.Institute of Museum and Library Services , Data Curation Education in Research Centers (DCERC; IMLS Award# RE-02-10-0004-10)Ope

Therkildsen Field Station at Emiquon: Data Management Beginning in 2013

Attention to data management at Therkildsen Field Station at Emiquon (TFSE) began in 2013. The University of Illinois Springfield built this research field station by the Illinois River between Lewistown and Havana on land owned by The Nature Conservancy called Emiquon Preserve. TFSE became a member of a partnership of university, government, and non-profit organizations that supports research activities including floodplain restoration. An ethnographic investigation studied data practices and the introduction of data management at the station as well as at Emiquon Preserve. Site history and data-related topics based on interviews of participants are presented. Themes relating to data activities are presented along with observations of existing digital infrastructure arrangements. This case study provides an example of data management planning by scientific research participants for a site-based, multi-partner community.National Science Foundation (NSF DEB, Rapid Grant# 1347077) and Institute of Museum and Library Services Data Curation Education in Research Centers (IMLS/DCERC, Award# RE-02-10-0004-10).Ope

Two-Stream Model: Toward Data Production for Sharing Field Science Data

Scientific data play a central role in the production of knowledge reported in scientific publications. Today, data sharing policies together with technological capacity are fueling visions of data as open and accessible where data appear to stand-alone as products of the research process. Yet, guidelines and outputs are constantly being produced that impact subsequent work with the data, particularly in field-oriented, data-rich earth science research. We propose a model that focuses on two distinct yet intertwined data streams: internal-use data and public-reuse data. Internal-use data often involves a complex mix of processing, analysis and integration strategies creating data in forms leading to the publication of papers. Public-reuse data is prepared with a more standardized set of procedures creating data packages in the form of well-described, parameter-based datasets for release to a data repository and for reuse by others. While scientific researchers are familiar with collecting and analyzing data for publication in the scientific literature, the second data stream helps to identify tasks relating to the preparation of data for future, unanticipated reuse. The second stream represents an expansion in conceptualization of data management for the majority of natural scientists from a publication metaphor to recognition of a release metaphor. A combined dual-function model brings attention to some of the less recognized barriers that impede preparation of data for reuse. Digital data analysis spawns a multitude of files often assessed while ‘in use’ so for reuse of data, scientists must first identify what data files to share. They must also create robust data processes that frequently involve establishing new distributions of labor. The two-stream approach creates a visual representation for data generators who now must think about what data are most likely to have value not only for their work but also for the work of others. Development of this approach is part of a collaborative project studying site-based data curation in geobiology for geologists, geochemists, and microbiologists at Yellowstone National Park.Ope

Configuring Devices for Phenomena in-the-Making

STS scholars are engaging in collaborative research in order to study extended socio-technical phenomena. This article participates in discussions on methodography and inventive methods by reflecting on visualizations used both internally by a team of researchers and together with study participants. We describe how these devices for generating and transforming data were brought to our ethnographic inquiry into the formation of research infrastructures which we found to involve unwieldy and evolving phenomena. The visualizations are partial renderings of the object of inquiry, crafted and informed by 'configuration' as a method of assemblage that supports ethnographic study of contemporary socio-technical phenomena. We scrutinize our interdisciplinary bringing together of visualizing devices - timelines, collages, and sketches - and position them in the STS methods toolbox for inquiry and invention. These devices are key to investigating and engaging with the dynamics of configuring infrastructures intended to support scientific knowledge production. We conclude by observing how our three kinds of visualizing devices provide flexibility, comprehension and in(ter)ventive opportunities for study of and engagement with complex phenomena in-the-making.Peer reviewe

Building FLOW: Federating Libraries on the Web

Individuals, teams, organizations, and networks can be thought of as tiers or classes within the complex grid of technology and practice in which research documentation is both consumed and generated. The panoply of possible classes share with the others a common need for document management tools and practices. The distinctive document management tools and practices used within each represent boundaries across which information could flow openly if technology and metadata standards were to provide an accessible digital framework. The CERN Document Server (CDS), implemented by a research partnership at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), establishes a prototype tiered repository system for such a panoply. Research suggests modifications to enable cross-domain information flow and is represented as a metadata grid

Digital Data Practices and the Long Term Ecological Research Program Growing Global

This paper explores data practices in a Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) setting. It describes a number of salient data characteristics that are specific to the LTER program and outlines some central features of the curation approach cultivated within the US LTER network. It goes on to identify recent developments within the international LTER program relating to data issues: increasing heterogeneities due to networking, integration of data from additional disciplines, and new technologies in a changing digital landscape. Information management experience within LTER provides one example of the recurrent balancing inherent to the work of data curation. It highlights (1) taking into account the extended temporal horizon of data care, (2) aligning support for data, science and information infrastructure, and (3) integrating site and network-level responsibilities. LTER contributes to the inquiry into how to manage the continuity of digital data and to our understanding of how to design a sustainable information infrastructure

The Intermediation of Community and Infrastructure

The concepts of community and infrastructure reverberate throughout the information sciences. As digital information technology becomes ubiquitous in work and everyday life, scholars analyze how communities adapt to, and adapt, information infrastructure. This paper explores this topic through a cross-study of field scientists' changing data practices and of older adults learning technology. The contribution of this comparative study is the concept of an intermediary space. Both studies found individuals, referred to as intermediaries, who enable their communities to speak back to information infrastructure—that is, to have a voice in infrastructural development. In particular, the study noted the roles of those outside positions of power in the design and development of effective information infrastructure. Understanding this intermediary space involves attending to issues related to design and narrative. The implications of these findings include more effectively preparing the information sciences' workforce for these intermediary roles

Towards Standardization: A Participatory Framework for Scientific Standard-Making

In contemporary scientific research, standard-making and standardization are key processes for the sharing and reuse of data. The goals of this paper are twofold: 1) to stress that collaboration is crucial to standard-making, and 2) to urge recognition of metadata standardization as part of the scientific process. To achieve these goals, a participatory framework for developing and implementing scientific metadata standards is presented. We highlight the need for ongoing, open dialogue within and among research communities at multiple levels. Using the Long Term Ecological Research network adoption of the Ecological Metadata Language as a case example in the natural sciences, we illustrate how a participatory framework addresses the need for active coordination of the evolution of scientific metadata standards. The participatory framework is contrasted with a hierarchical framework to underscore how the development of scientific standards is a dynamic and continuing process. The roles played by ‘best practices’ and ‘working standards’ are identified in relation to the process of standardization