John Porter, VCR/LTER
Review: New Knowledge from Old Data: The Role of Standards in the Sharing and Reuse of Ecological Data by Ann S. Zimmerman, Science Technology Human Values 33:631. 2008, DOI:10.1177/0162243907306704
This article provides an "outsider view" of data sharing in ecology. Author Ann S. Zimmerman is a librarian specializing in data and data sharing, and has a long history with LTER and NEON. The article addresses topics such as "Data and Data Reuse," "Standards as Distance Spanners," "Ecological Data and the Practice of Ecology," "Locating and Acquiring Data," "The Relationship of Ecological Identity to Reuse", "Recognizing the Importance of Purpose," "Dealing with Uncertainty," "Focusing on the Object of Study," and "Focusing on the Data Collector."
With such a list of topics, it's no big jump to conclude that this article will be a "good read" for LTER Information Managers, especially in a time where there is increased emphasis on data integration and synthesis. Dr. Zimmerman provides the context for the study of standards and draws on interviews with ecologists to help us understand the roles they play in the reuse of ecological data.
The article documents how a variety of ecologists (e.g., modelers, foresters, plant, aquatic and avian ecologists) reused data for articles in Ecological Society of America journals, and was based on interviews during 2001-2002. Most of the data being reused came from tables and graphs in publications, or direct contact with researchers, although a few were based on publicly-available datasets. Interestingly, she found that "The ability to understand data was the most important factor for reuse, and it was this requirement that binds together ecologists’ experiences." That is, ecologists tended to use types of data that they were most familiar with. This links to her fundamental thesis that experience and training provides a context for understanding data that extends beyond the formal metadata available. In specific she found that: "Their experiences in the field or laboratory, in combination with formal disciplinary knowledge, provided ecologists with the expertise to understand the critical link between research purpose, methods, and data; to recognize the limitations of particular types of data; and to visualize potential points of data collection error."
With regard to standards, she found that there were a wide variety of factors that were considered when choosing a methodology, such as the purpose of the study, and the cost and availability of instrumentation. Her conclusion was that "There are legitimate reasons for the use of different research methods, which helps explain why the ecologists I interviewed did not place overriding emphases on methodological standardization."
I found the article to be most illuminating for the perspective of "point-by-point" syntheses - where a few data values are drawn from a wide variety of sources (e.g., different publications). It would be interesting to see additional treatments of this subject now that there is a greater degree of data availability and metadata standardization. Nonetheless, the article provides clear documentation of many of the factors that influence ecologists when reusing data.