SUMMARY OFUSING AND REUSING DATA

 Data reuse success stories: how to ensure your data is reused

Researchers create data using different methods during the research lifecycle. These data are used for primary research and published in papers or research reports. Making them available for later reuse.  Using data is the immediate, intended application of a dataset while data reuse occurs when existing information is taken and applied to a new problem, often by entirely different stakeholder. Data reuse depends on factors such as users’ IT (information and technology) skills and their ability to find, access and work with datasets (Boté & Térmens, 2019).

Some of the things to consider for data use and reuse are as follows:  explore different sources for reusable data, look for value added databases with curated content; check whether there is sufficient metadata to enable data reuse; assess the quality of the data, check if the data adheres to a standard; verify that the data has been ethically collected and that reuse of the data conforms with policies and regulations (Van de Sandt, 2019).

There are several benefits of reusing research data, including cost effectiveness and efficiency, an increased sense of community, greater transparency and clarity of research, recognition of data ownership and an increase in citations. It enables researchers to save time on data collection (Pasquetto, 2017) , Additionally, it allows both researchers and institutions that store data to enhance research data management. In economic terms, reusing data allows researchers and institutions to save money. Finally, reusing data makes it possible to create a new dataset and publish it for future use, thereby avoiding unnecessary duplication of data collection work (Boté & Térmens, 2019).

Despite these benefits, challenges remain the level of trustworthiness of the data with respect to provenance and reliability; anonymity, privacy and confidentiality; recognition of authorship when reusing others’ data, Finally, data licensing is essential when reusing research data and the lack of standardized technical formats for data are also issues limiting data reuse (Wallis, 2014).

The best practices to solve the challenges includes: good documentation practices and the use of standards facilitates interoperability among different types of datasets; research data should be accompanied by a data publication process and be subject to editorial quality control and an independent peer-review system; Making data and software reusable and documenting the provenance of computational results. Finally, for data to be reused, research data should meet the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) principles proposed20 and subsequently adopted by the European Commission (Wilkinson et al., 2016).)

In conclusion, the use and reuse of data are vital components of modern information management. Data use supports decision making and service delivery, data reuse extends the value of existing information for new insights and innovation.

For additional information, click the link above .

REFERENCE

Boté, J., & Térmens, M. (2019). Reusing data: Technical and ethical challenges. DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, 39(6), 329-337. doi.org.

Pasquetto, I.; Randles, B. & Borgman, C. (2017). On the reuse of scientific data. Data Sci. J., 16(8). doi: 10.5334/dsj-2017-008.

Wallis, J C 2014 Data Producers Courting Data Reusers: Two Cases from Modeling Communities. International Journal of Digital Curation, 9(1): 98–109. DOI: https://doi.org

Van de Sandt, S., Dallmeier-Tiessen, S., & Petras, V. (2019). The definition of reuse. Data Science Journal, 18(1), 22. doi.org

Wilkinson, M. D., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. J., Appleton, G., Axton, M., Baak, A., Blomberg, N., Boiten, J.-W., da Silva Santos, L. B., Bourne, P. E., Bouwman, J., Brookes, A. J., Clark, T., Crosas, M., Dillo, I., Dumon, O., Edmunds, S., Evelo, C. T., Finkers, R., … Mons, B. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data, 3(1), Article 160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18

 

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