Improving Reuse of Shared Data
We are actively collaborating with a team of researchers from the School of Information at the University of Michigan to explore data documentation strategies that better facilitate reuse of shared data. The project “DIPIR” (“Dissemination Information Packages (DIPS) for Information Reuse”) takes a comparative perspective, exploring use of data repositories in the social sciences, zoology, and archaeology. Open Context is one of the systems investigated by this study.
The project will help us better understand user needs vis a vis data sharing. To this end, we are actively recruiting volunteers for a user experience and user needs study for DIPIR. These studies will be used to further refine Open Context’s interface and services and our data publication work-flows so that we capture the kinds of information researchers need to best reuse data published by Open Context.
