TY - GEN
T1 - How institutional factors influence the creation of scientific metadata
AU - Mayernik, Matthew S.
AU - Batcheller, Archer L.
AU - Borgman, Christine L.
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - Access to high volumes of digital data offer researchers in all disciplines the possibility to ask new kinds of questions using computational methods. Burgeoning digital data collections, however, challenge established data management and analysis methods. Data management is a multi-pronged institutionalized effort, spanning technology, policies, metadata, and everyday data practices. In this paper, we focus on the last two components: metadata and everyday data practices. We demonstrate how "frictions" arise in creating and managing metadata. These include standardization frictions, temporal frictions, data sharing frictions, and frictions related to the availability of human support. Through an illustration of these frictions in case studies of three large, distributed, collaborative science projects, we show how the degree of metadata institutionalization can strongly influence data management needs and practices.
AB - Access to high volumes of digital data offer researchers in all disciplines the possibility to ask new kinds of questions using computational methods. Burgeoning digital data collections, however, challenge established data management and analysis methods. Data management is a multi-pronged institutionalized effort, spanning technology, policies, metadata, and everyday data practices. In this paper, we focus on the last two components: metadata and everyday data practices. We demonstrate how "frictions" arise in creating and managing metadata. These include standardization frictions, temporal frictions, data sharing frictions, and frictions related to the availability of human support. Through an illustration of these frictions in case studies of three large, distributed, collaborative science projects, we show how the degree of metadata institutionalization can strongly influence data management needs and practices.
KW - Climate science
KW - Collaboration
KW - Data
KW - Ecology
KW - Metadata
KW - Scientific data
KW - Sensor networks
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/79952583801
U2 - 10.1145/1940761.1940818
DO - 10.1145/1940761.1940818
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:79952583801
SN - 9781450301213
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
SP - 417
EP - 425
BT - Proceedings of the 2011 iConference
T2 - 6th Annual Conference on 2011 iConference: Inspiration, Integrity, and Intrepidity, iConference 2011
Y2 - 8 February 2011 through 11 February 2011
ER -