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Data metrics survey results published

CDL UC3,

Today, we are pleased to announce the publication Making Data Count in Scientific Data. John Kratz and Carly Strasser led the research effort to understand the needs and values of both the researchers who create and use data and of the data managers who preserve and publish it. The Making Data Count project is a collaboration between the CDL, PLOS, and DataONE to define and implement a practical suite of metrics for evaluating the impact of datasets, which is a necessary prerequisite to widespread recognition of datasets as first class scholarly objects.

We started the project with research to understand what metrics would be meaningful to stakeholders and what metrics we can practically collect. We conducted a literature review, focus groups, and– the subject of today’s paper–  a pair of online surveys for researchers and data managers.

In November and December of 2014, 247 researchers and 73 data repository managers answered our questions about data sharing, use, and metrics.Graph of interest in various metrics Survey and anonymized data are available in the Dash repository. These responses told us, among other things, which existing Article Level Metrics (ALMs) might be profitably applied to data:

We have already begun to collect data on the sample project corpus– the entire DataONE collection of 100k+ datasets. Using this pilot corpus, we see preliminary indications of researcher engagement with data across a number of online channels not previously thought to be in use by scholars. The results of this pilot will complement the survey described in today’s paper with real measurement of data-related activities “in the wild.”

For more conclusions and in-depth discussion of the initial research, see the paper, which is open access and available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2015.39. Stay tuned for analysis and results of the DataONE data-level metrics data on the Making Data Count project page: http://lagotto.io/MDC/.