Big data, little data, no data
Subtitle: scholarship in the networked world
By: Christine L. Borgman
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 383
ISBN-13: 9780262028561
Subjects: Technological innovations; Information storage and retrieval systems; Research; Methodology; Cyberinfrastructure; Data processing; Communication in learning and scholarship; Information technology
Description: "Big data" is on the covers of Science, Nature, the Economist, and Wired magazines, on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. But despite the media hyperbole, as Christine Borgman points out in this examination of data and scholarly research, having the right data is usually better than having more data; little data can be just as valuable as big data. In many cases, there are no data - because relevant data don't exist, cannot be found, or are not available. Moreoever, data sharing is difficult, incentives to do so are minimal, and data practices vary widely across disciplines. Borgman, an often-cited authority on scholarly communication, argues that data have no value or meaning in isolation; they exist within a knowledge infrastructure - an ecology of people, practices, technologies, institutions, material objects, and relationships. After laying out the premises of her investigation - six "provocations" meant to inspire discussion about the uses of data in scholarship - Borgman offers case studies of data practices in the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, and then considers the implications of her findings for scholarly practice and research policy. To manage and exploit data over the long term, Borgman argues, requires massive investment in knowledge infrastructures; at stake is the future of scholarship. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages [289]-360) and index.
Table of contents: title: Provocations; title: What are data?; title: Data scholarship; title: Data diversity; title: Data scholarship in the sciences; title: Data scholarship in the social sciences; title: Data scholarship in the humanities; title: Sharing, releasing, and reusing data; title: Credit, attribution, and discovery of data; title: What to keep and why to keep them.