Is There a Social Life in Open Data? The Case of Open Data Practices in Educational Technology Research

Juliana Raffaghelli,Stefania Manca

doi:10.3390/publications7010009

Juliana Raffaghelli, Stefania Manca

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7010009

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Abstract

In the landscape of Open Science, Open Data (OD) plays a crucial role as data are one of the most basic components of research, despite their diverse formats across scientific disciplines. Opening up data is a recent concern for policy makers and researchers, as the basis for good Open Science practices. The common factor underlying these new practices—the relevance of promoting Open Data circulation and reuse—is mostly a social form of knowledge sharing and construction. However, while data sharing is being strongly promoted by policy making and is becoming a frequent practice in some disciplinary fields, Open Data sharing is much less developed in Social Sciences and in educational research. In this study, practices of OD publication and sharing in the field of Educational Technology are explored. The aim is to investigate Open Data sharing in a selection of Open Data repositories, as well as in the academic social network site ResearchGate. The 23 Open Datasets selected across five OD platforms were analysed in terms of (a) the metrics offered by the platforms and the affordances for social activity; (b) the type of OD published; (c) the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) data principles compliance; and (d) the extent of presence and related social activity on ResearchGate. The results show a very low social activity in the platforms and very few correspondences in ResearchGate that highlight a limited social life surrounding Open Datasets. Future research perspectives as well as limitations of the study are interpreted in the discussion.

Highlights

Open Science is the movement that advocates for more public and accessible science [1,2], and has progressively encompassed new researchers’ practices and identities that go beyond the idea of digital science towards open and social activities [3,4,5]
This study aims to fill this gap by analysing the extent of the presence and related social activity of a number of Open Datasets in the Educational Technology field
We observed that the datasets in Social Sciences across the data repositories remained stable, while this was not the case for the Educational Technology sector

Summary

Introduction

Open Science is the movement that advocates for more public and accessible science [1,2], and has progressively encompassed new researchers’ practices and identities that go beyond the idea of digital science towards open and social activities [3,4,5]. While the European Union initially adopted the term Science 2.0 [16] in an attempt to follow the participatory nature of the Web 2.0, the concept of Open Science has gained ground and covered a number of goals, namely, public accessibility and transparency of scientific communication, public availability and reusability of scientific data, transparency in experimental methodology, observation and collection of data, and use of web-based tools/infrastructure to facilitate collaboration [17] In this scenario, Open Data acquire a crucial importance in Open Science as an object of socialization and exchange, shaping the ideals of openness in science [10]. The concept of Open Data expands on this idea by making the units of research (data) open [18]

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