Panel Discussion presentation: Value-based Indicators for Reuse & Their Implications for Data Curation

Nic Weber, MLS, is a PhD student and Research Assistant, Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Overview: I. The Data Practice Working group - What we talk about when we talk about Value II. Some research findings - Qualitative Case : The Data Conservancy - Quantitative Case: NCAR’s Research Data Archiv

MODELING THE PROFITABILITY OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS: DEVELOPMENT AND IMPACT OF BARCLAYS DE ZOETE WEDD'S BEATRICE

Traditional management accounting systems are limited in their ability to provide profitability information relevant to management decisions. The problems of inadequate profitability measurement are intensified in today's business environments, where changing margins due to deregulation and new entrants, new products with unknown costs, and customer sophistication in locating low-cost providers often combine to leave unprepared firms with growing numbers of loss-making client relationships. In response, firms in a number of service and manufacturing industries are experimenting with new methods for measuring performance, and are implementing these techniques using information systems. The collection and analysis of information on the profitability of customer relationships enables managers to identify and defend their most attractive market segments, and to turn loss-making accounts into profitable ones. The London-based securities house, BZW, developed BEATRICE, an innovative information system that combines activity-based accounting principles and a model of customer profitability to make an income assignment to each of the 6,000 trades the firm makes in a day. The system's value is considerable, and can be evaluated by using industry performance benchmarks, and by comparing management decision-making with the currently available information to what was possible with previous data.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Remediating Civic Tech

Civic technologies are designed to mediate government and citizen interactions, but often fall short of this goal. In this poster, we present our on-going work of remediating civic tech applications in order to connect citizens to government services, and to one another. We describe the development of an open-source transcription engine that transforms video into searchable archives of government legislative meetings. By exploring the process of re- mediation, we argue that civic tech designers can better achieve their goals of brokering relationships between people, information, and governance

Beyond the Matrix: Repository Services for Qualitative Data

The Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) provides infrastructure and guidance for the sharing and reuse of digital data used in qualitative and multi-method social inquiry. In this paper we describe some of the repository’s early experiences providing services developed specifically for the curation of qualitative research data. We focus on QDR’s efforts to address two key challenges for qualitative data sharing. The first challenge concerns constraints on data sharing in order to protect human participants and their identities and to comply with copyright laws. The second set of challenges addresses the unique characteristics of qualitative data and their relationship to the published text. We describe a novel method of annotating scholarly publications, resulting in a “transparency appendix” that allows the sharing of such “granular data” (Moravcsik et al., 2013). We conclude by describing the future directions of QDR’s services for qualitative data archiving, sharing, and reuse

The long-term effects of inflation on inflation expectations

We study the long-term effects of inflation surges on inflation expectations. German households living in areas with higher local inflation during the hyperinflation of the 1920s expect higher inflation today. Our evidence points towards a transmission of inflation experiences from parents to children and through local institutions. Differential historical inflation also modulates the updating of expectations to current inflation, the response to unconventional fiscal policies, and financial decisions. We obtain similar results in a test with Polish households residing in formerly German areas. Overall, our findings are consistent with inflationary shocks having a long-lasting impact on attitudes towards inflation

How Data Curation Enables Epistemically Responsible Reuse of Qualitative Data

Data sharing and reuse are becoming the norm in quantitative research. At the same time, significant skepticism still accompanies the sharing and reuse of qualitative research data on both ethical and epistemological grounds. Nevertheless, there is growing interest in the reuse of qualitative data, as demonstrated by the range of contributions in this special issue. In this research note, we address epistemological critiques of reusing qualitative data and argue that careful curation of data can enable what we term “epistemologically responsible reuse” of qualitative data. We begin by briefly defining qualitative data and summarizing common epistemological objections to their shareability or usefulness for secondary analysis. We then introduce the concept of curation as enabling epistemologically responsible reuse and a potential way to address such objections. We discuss three recent trends that we believe are enhancing curatorial practices and thus expand the opportunities for responsible reuse: improvements in data management practices among researchers, the development of collaborative curation practices at repositories focused on qualitative data and technological advances that support sharing rich qualitative data. Using three examples of successful reuse of qualitative data, we illustrate the potential of these three trends to further improve the availability of reusable data projects

MODELING THE PROFITABILITY OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS: DEVELOPMENT AND IMPACT OF BARCLAYS DE ZOETE WEDD'S BEATRICE

Traditional management accounting systems are limited in their ability to provide profitability information relevant to management decisions. The problems of inadequate profitability measurement are intensified in today's business environments, where changing margins due to deregulation and new entrants, new products with unknown costs, and customer sophistication in locating low-cost providers often combine to leave unprepared firms with growing numbers of loss-making client relationships. In response, firms in a number of service and manufacturing industries are experimenting with new methods for measuring performance, and are implementing these techniques using information systems. The collection and analysis of information on the profitability of customer relationships enables managers to identify and defend their most attractive market segments, and to turn loss-making accounts into profitable ones. The London-based securities house, BZW, developed BEATRICE, an innovative information system that combines activity-based accounting principles and a model of customer profitability to make an income assignment to each of the 6,000 trades the firm makes in a day. The system's value is considerable, and can be evaluated by using industry performance benchmarks, and by comparing management decision-making with the currently available information to what was possible with previous data.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Citizen curation in online discussions of Donald Trump's presidency: sharing the news on Mumsnet.

In an era of fake news and concerns about social-media bubbles, we consider how participants in online discussions on the UK parenting website Mumsnet assess the validity and potential subjectivity of news information sources. Building on previous work on the phenomenon of social media curation and news curation, we argue that there is evidence for the development of a theory and practice of citizen curation - the subjective and non-professional collection, assessment and criticism of information by participants in online discussions for the benefit of the group. Participants on Mumsnet collaborate to source, present and curate information from a variety of news sources, and impose a clear hierarchy with reference to these sources' veracity. Information garnered from mainstream, liberal-leaning news sources is given the highest level of trust, often being used to support information from other sources, which are seen as less trust-worthy. Information might also be presented from conservative-leaning news sources, but only when it supports the overall anti-Trump tone. Having acknowledged the selective subjectivity of the curatorial process performed by our participants, we then ask how far this contributes to the creation of a liberal bubble effect, and how far our participants are willing to go to validate news stories shared in this way. We argue that our participants demonstrated a clear awareness of the veracity and potential subjectivity of their sources, worked collaboratively to verify news items, and were proud of their ability to scoop the mainstream news media on occasion. Given that earlier work on such groups of news-absorbed users has suggested that they tend to be male, the identification of such a group on a female-dominated website also expands the literature and suggests that such gender differentiations should be made with care

Report on the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3)

This report records and discusses the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3). The report includes a description of the keynote presentation of the workshop, which served as an overview of sustainable scientific software. It also summarizes a set of lightning talks in which speakers highlighted to-the-point lessons and challenges pertaining to sustaining scientific software. The final and main contribution of the report is a summary of the discussions, future steps, and future organization for a set of self-organized working groups on topics including developing pathways to funding scientific software; constructing useful common metrics for crediting software stakeholders; identifying principles for sustainable software engineering design; reaching out to research software organizations around the world; and building communities for software sustainability. For each group, we include a point of contact and a landing page that can be used by those who want to join that group's future activities. The main challenge left by the workshop is to see if the groups will execute these activities that they have scheduled, and how the WSSSPE community can encourage this to happen

Report on the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3)

This report records and discusses the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3). The report includes a description of the keynote presentation of the workshop, which served as an overview of sustainable scientific software. It also summarizes a set of lightning talks in which speakers highlighted to-the-point lessons and challenges pertaining to sustaining scientific software. The final and main contribution of the report is a summary of the discussions, future steps, and future organization for a set of self-organized working groups on topics including developing pathways to funding scientific software; constructing useful common metrics for crediting software stakeholders; identifying principles for sustainable software engineering design; reaching out to research software organizations around the world; and building communities for software sustainability. For each group, we include a point of contact and a landing page that can be used by those who want to join that group’s future activities. The main challenge left by the workshop is to see if the groups will execute these activities that they have scheduled, and how the WSSSPE community can encourage this to happe