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Researchers need to be able to find, access, and use data to participate in open science. To understand how users search for research data, we analyzed textual queries issued at a large social science data archive, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). We collected unique user queries from 988,475 user search sessions over four years (2012-16). Overall, we found that only 30% of site visitors entered search terms into the ICPSR website. We analyzed search strategies within these sessions by extending existing dataset search taxonomies to classify a subset of the 1,554 most popular queries. We identified five categories of commonly-issued queries: keyword-based (e.g., date, place, topic); name (e.g., study, series); identifier (e.g., study, series); author (e.g., institutional, individual); and type (e.g., file, format). While the dominant search strategy used short keywords to explore topics, directed searches for known items using study and series names were also common. We further distinguished exploratory browsing from directed search queries based on their page views, refinements, search depth, duration, and length. Directed queries were longer (i.e., they had more words), while sessions with exploratory queries had more refinements and associated page views. By comparing search interactions at ICPSR to other natural language interactions in similar web search contexts, we conclude that dataset search at ICPSR is underutilized. We envision how alternative search paradigms, such as those enabled by recommender systems, can enhance dataset search.

 

This dataset contains trace data describing user interactions with the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research website (ICPSR). We gathered site usage data from Google Analytics. We focused our analysis on user sessions, which are groups of interactions with resources (e.g., website pages) and events initiated by users. ICPSR tracks a subset of user interactions (i.e., other than page views) through event triggers. We analyzed sequences of interactions with resources, including the ICPSR data catalog, variable index, data citations collected in the ICPSR Bibliography of Data-related Literature, and topical information about project archives. As part of our analysis, we calculated the total number of unique sessions and page views in the study period. Data in our study period fell between September 1, 2012, and 2016. ICPSR's website was updated and relaunched in September 2012 with new search functionality, including a Social Science Variables Database (SSVD) tool. ICPSR then reorganized its website and changed its analytics collection procedures in 2016, marking this as the cutoff date for our analysis. Data are relevant for two reasons. First, updates to the ICPSR website during the study period focused only on front-end design rather than the website's search functionality. Second, the core features of the website over the period we examined (e.g., faceted and variable search, standardized metadata, the use of controlled vocabularies, and restricted data applications) are shared with other major data archives, making it likely that the trends in user behavior we report are generalizable.
 

Data users need relevant context and research expertise to effectively search for and identify relevant datasets. Leading data providers, such as the Inter‐university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), offer standardized metadata and search tools to support data search. Metadata standards emphasize the machine‐readability of data and its documentation. There are opportunities to enhance dataset search by improving users' ability to learn about, and make sense of, information about data. Prior research has shown that context and expertise are two main barriers users face in effectively searching for, evaluating, and deciding whether to reuse data. In this paper, we propose a novel chatbot‐based search system, DataChat, that leverages a graph database and a large language model to provide novel ways for users to interact with and search for research data. DataChat complements data archives' and institutional repositories' ongoing efforts to curate, preserve, and share research data for reuse by making it easier for users to explore and learn about available research data. 

Social scientists increasingly share data so others can evaluate, replicate, and extend their research. To understand the process of data discovery as a precursor to data use, we study prospective users’ interactions with archived data. We gathered data for 98,000 user sessions initiated at a large social science data archive, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Our data reflect four years (2012-16) of users’ interactions with archival resources, including a data catalog, study-level metadata, variables, and publications that cite nearly 10,000 datasets. We constructed a network of user interactions linking website landing (e.g., site entrances) to exit pages, from which we identified three types of paths that users take through the research data archive: direct, orienting, and scenic. We also interpreted points of failure (e.g., drop-offs) and recurring behaviors (e.g., sensemaking) that support or impede data discovery along search paths. We articulate strategies that users adopt as they navigate data search and suggest ways to enhance the accessibility of data, metadata, and the systems that organize each. 

Physical samples and their associated (meta)data underpin scientific discoveries across disciplines, and can enable new science when appropriately archived. However, there are significant gaps in community practices and infrastructure that currently prevent accurate provenance tracking, reproducibility, and attribution. For the vast majority of samples, descriptive metadata is often sparse, inaccessible, or absent. Samples and associated (meta)data may also be scattered across numerous physical collections, data repositories, laboratories, data files, and papers with no clear linkages or provenance tracking as new information is generated over time. The Physical Samples Curation Cluster has therefore developed ‘A Scientific Author Guide for Publishing Open Research Using Physical Samples.’ This involved synthesizing existing practices, community feedback, and assessing real-world examples to identify community and infrastructure needs. We identified areas of work needed to enable authors to efficiently reference samples and related data, link related samples and data, and track their use. Our goal is to help improve the discoverability, interoperability, use of physical samples and associated (meta)data into the future. 

Data archives are an important source of high-quality data in many fields, making them ideal sites to study data reuse. By studying data reuse through citation networks, we are able to learn how hidden research communities—those that use the same scientific data sets—are organized. This paper analyzes the community structure of an authoritative network of data sets cited in academic publications, which have been collected by a large, social science data archive: the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Through network analysis, we identified communities of social science data sets and fields of research connected through shared data use. We argue that communities of exclusive data reuse form “subdivisions” that contain valuable disciplinary resources, while data sets at a “crossroads” broadly connect research communities. Our research reveals the hidden structure of data reuse and demonstrates how interdisciplinary research communities organize around data sets as shared scientific inputs. These findings contribute new ways of describing scientific communities to understand the impacts of research data reuse.

 

Data curation is the process of making a dataset fit-for-use and archivable. It is critical to data-intensive science because it makes complex data pipelines possible, studies reproducible, and data reusable. Yet the complexities of the hands-on, technical, and intellectual work of data curation is frequently overlooked or downplayed. Obscuring the work of data curation not only renders the labor and contributions of data curators invisible but also hides the impact that curators' work has on the later usability, reliability, and reproducibility of data. To better understand the work and impact of data curation, we conducted a close examination of data curation at a large social science data repository, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). We asked: What does curatorial work entail at ICPSR, and what work is more or less visible to different stakeholders and in different contexts? And, how is that curatorial work coordinated across the organization? We triangulated accounts of data curation from interviews and records of curation in Jira tickets to develop a rich and detailed account of curatorial work. While we identified numerous curatorial actions performed by ICPSR curators, we also found that curators rely on a number of craft practices to perform their jobs. The reality of their work practices defies the rote sequence of events implied by many life cycle or workflow models. Further, we show that craft practices are needed to enact data curation best practices and standards. The craft that goes into data curation is often invisible to end users, but it is well recognized by ICPSR curators and their supervisors. Explicitly acknowledging and supporting data curators as craftspeople is important in creating sustainable and successful curatorial infrastructures. 

This paper describes a machine learning approach for annotating and analyzing data curation work logs at ICPSR, a large social sciences data archive. The systems we studied track curation work and coordinate team decision-making at ICPSR. Archive staff use these systems to organize, prioritize, and document curation work done on datasets, making them promising resources for studying curation work and its impact on data reuse, especially in combination with data usage analytics. A key challenge, however, is classifying similar activities so that they can be measured and associated with impact metrics. This paper contributes: 1) a set of data curation activities; 2) a computational model for identifying curation actions in work log descriptions; and 3) an analysis of frequent data curation activities at ICPSR over time. We first propose a set of data curation actions to help us analyze the impact of curation work. We then use this set to annotate a set of data curation logs, which contain records of data transformations and project management decisions completed by archive staff. Finally, we train a text classifier to detect the frequency of curation actions in a large set of work logs. Our approach supports the analysis of curation work documented in work log systems as an important step toward studying the relationship between research data curation and data reuse.