Typology of Data Uses: An output of the FORCE11 Data Usage Typologies Working Group
Project member (30):
- Cadwallader, Lauren1
- Cannon, Matt2
- Courtot, Mélanie3
- Dong, Danping4
- Edmunds, Scott
- Ernest, Ester
- Gautier, Julian
- González López, José Benito5
- Gregory, Kathleen6
- Guerreiro, Maria7
- Harrison, Melissa8
- Heibi, Ivan9
- Holmes, Kristi10
- Jeangirard, Eric11
- Johnsson, Maria12
- Krishnan, Arjun13
- Manghi, Paolo14
- McKone, Lubov15
- Medina-Smith, Andrea16
- Meyer, Dagmar17
- Morrison, Monica18
- Noesgaard, Daniel19
- Pepe, Alberto20
- Shook, Elisabeth21
- Smith, Graham22
- van Gulick, Ana23
- Vines, Tim24
- Westra, Brian25
- Wood-Charlson, Elisha26
- Zakharov, Wei27
- 1. PLOS
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2.
Taylor and Francis (United Kingdom)
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3.
University of Toronto
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4.
Singapore Management University
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5.
European Organization for Nuclear Research
- 6. Centre for Science & Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University
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7.
Dryad Digital Repository
- 8. Europe PMC
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9.
OpenCitations
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10.
Northwestern University
- 11. French Ministry of Higher Education and Research
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12.
Lund University
- 13. University of Colorado Anschutz
- 14. OpenAIRE
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15.
Johns Hopkins University
- 16. Sage
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17.
European Research Council
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18.
University of Saskatchewan
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19.
Global Biodiversity Information Facility
- 20. SAGE Bionetworks
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21.
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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22.
Springer Nature (United Kingdom)
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23.
Figshare (United Kingdom)
- 24. DataSeer
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25.
University of Iowa
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26.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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27.
Purdue University
Description
Data is being created, shared, and used at an ever increasing pace. The importance of data use is reflected in the need to describe data use types in a comprehensive and consistent way. The FORCE11 Data Usage Typologies Working Group has developed a typology which allows to describe the key dimensions of data use. The typology is agnostic with regard to data creators, users, and purposes. Thus, it is generic in principle, but due to the group’s composition it is most immediately applicable to research-related use cases. It covers not only cases typically considered “reuse”, but any instance of “use”. The typology is comprised of three overarching dimensions, namely Access, User, and Application. Within these dimensions, a set of overall 14 categories is offered to describe data uses, with a defined set of value options for each category. When applying the typology, it is suggested to code properties of a single user, while allowing for different applications within one instance of use. The typology is envisioned by the group to be applied e.g. by repositories, funders, or meta-researchers interested in analysing how a corpus of datasets is being used. This could then be used to derive infrastructural or policy decisions. The group plans to develop metadata recommendations based on the typology, which will dock to existing schemas wherever possible.