IASSIST Quarterly (Journal)
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Building human networks to drive forward innovations in international data access: Introducing the International Secure Data Facility Professionals Network (ISDFPN)
Full text linkThe International Secure Data Facility Professionals Network (ISDFPN) was set up in 2022 as part of the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud project (SSHOC) with the aim of bringing together international colleagues working in or towards Trusted Research Environments (TREs), to share expertise and experiences, and to spark collaboration as well as develop new ideas.
While various international networks and collaborations exist currently, these aim to improve the international data infrastructure landscape, and mainly focus on establishing connections between TREs. However, there is also a Forum needed for those working in these TREs, which provides a platform for regular knowledge exchange as well as opportunities of driving innovation. ISDFPN is not a network for developing infrastructure, rather it is a place to share experience, expertise, and ideas, which is not yet formally available internationally. As the fast-changing secure data landscape evolves, this Network will be a vital resource for collaborative work towards finding solutions for shared and newly emerging problems experienced by TRE staff. Where TREs are at different stages in their development, such a forum is vital as services seek to learn from each another.
The ISDFPN held its first virtual meeting on 30 March 2022, and, although the SSHOC project finished in April 2022, has continued to meet twice yearly, co-Chaired by the UK Data Service, and GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. This paper traces the ISDFPN from its origins and highlights both its aims and objectives as well as its activities so far
Understanding motivations and future needs for data deposits at Korea Social Science Data Archive
Full text linkKorea Social Science Data Archive (KOSSDA) has been integral in archiving and disseminating social science data in South Korea. As it transitioned into an independent research center under Seoul National University, we evaluated current data deposit process of KOSSDA through in-depth interviews with institutional data donors and identified future needs of data depositors. Motivations behind data deposit included recognizing data as a public good, addressing resource shortages in data curation, and enhancing data promotion. Future needs for KOSSDA included developing qualitative data guidelines, strengthening collaborations with donor institutions and academia as a whole, and automating the deposit process. These results guide the long-term strategy of KOSSDA to remain a leader in social science data archiving, ensuring its alignment with the evolving needs of the academic community
Yes, we are international
Full text linkWelcome to the second issue of IASSIST Quarterly for the year 2023 - IQ vol. 47(2).
I am very happy with the \u27International\u27 in IASSIST. It is important to learn from outside your own center. In this issue we have a focus on the United States and some African countries with a special focus on South Africa. The first article investigates LibGuides across the many states of the United States. The second article is centered on one of the data resources often found in the LibGuides pages, but the data itself is about all of the United States. In the third article we shift to the African continent and the described project has a base in South Africa with a connection to the United Kingdom - still part of Europe although not of the EU - and with research being conducted in several African countries. We can\u27t promise to cover the whole world in each IQ issue – but this issue is quite international.
The first article is \u27Taking count: A computational analysis of data resources on academic LibGuides in the U.S.\u27. Cody Hennesy, Alicia Kubas and Jenny McBurney have undertaken the task of collecting links to data and statistical resources from over 10,000 LibGuide pages at 123 R1 research institutions in the United States. The LibGuides platform has become the universal resource discovery platform in academic libraries in the U.S. LibGuides not only support researchers, they also help librarians in orientation among the many resources. The authors reach the conclusion that freely available resources from U.S. government agencies are the most widely used. Resources requiring paid licenses or memberships (like ICPSR) are also frequent. The analysis suggest traditional licensed statistical resources are more likely to be shared than complex microdata resources. Data cleaning of the nearly 200,000 links from the 10,000 guide pages was an essential part of the analysis. The authors cite the data scientist joke that 90% of the work is data cleaning, and they find that the actual number for the cleaning and normalization in this analysis was even larger, performed through Python and OpenRefine. The data process included accessing the LibGuide pages based on the keywords of \u27data\u27 and \u27statistic\u27 and then extracting the content links. The links were then cleaned, filtered and further normalized. The data cleaning showed a high degree of inconsistency and dead links, leading the authors to suggest a more centralized management of data resources. The most frequently found links to resources are through ICPSR and data.gov, and a table with the 20 most common resources shows that even the most uncommon resource among these 20 are included in more than 73% of the institutions. This demonstrates a high consistency across the institutions. However, the authors remark that they believe that the very few institutions that didn’t include a link to the popular data.gov would benefit from having information about this resource available for their researchers. Cody Hennesy and Jenny McBurney are the Journalism & Digital Media Librarian and a Social Sciences Librarian at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Alicia Kubas is a librarian at the U.S. Government Publishing Office.
The second article concerns metadata from IPUMS projects at the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation (ISRDI) at the University of Minnesota (note, these are among the central sources of data LibGuides, mentioned several times in the first article). The authors are Diana L. Magnuson, curator and historian at the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, and Wendy L. Thomas, now retired curator from the same institution. The title is \u27Expanding our perspective: building a sustainable metadata culture\u27. The article describes the learning obtained by ISRDI through the submission of an application for certification to the Core Trust Seal (CTS). When applying for certification the institution must document that it follows the standards and guidelines for the certification. In the case of the CTS - as in many other cases of certification - the building of a portfolio of documentation of procedures makes the applicant more self-aware of its history, as well as of the routines delivering the final products. The conclusion is also that the certification process has led to a better internal understanding at the ISRDI that can support future development as well as preserve the work done. IPUMS has over the last thirty years created the world’s largest accessible database of census microdata starting with the 1880 Historical Census Project that has been extended in both time directions and now covering more than a hundred years. Naturally, processing of data has changed over the years and keeping track of the documentation proved difficult. The decision to use digital object identifiers (DOIs) led to a persistency and uniqueness that supported the users. This also had internal benefits as references and publications were more easily trackable and the preservation work more accurate and complete for each product version. Among the figures of the article, you will find the workflow using the open archival information system (OAIS) model as well as the IPUMS business process model.
The third article concerns the dilemma of personal data protection versus the benefit of using data for life improvement. The title of the submission is \u27Data management instruments to protect the personal information of children and adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa\u27 and concerns health research in this group. On the one hand the researchers naturally must follow the data regulations as they appear in the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act in South Africa and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, and with special attention to high-risk and vulnerable groups such as children and adolescents. On the other hand, these vulnerable groups are also at risk from a health viewpoint, especially from infectious diseases like infantile paralysis, measles and pneumococci. Research and data collected from children has contributed to the development of vaccines, which has led to a dramatic reduction in child mortality and improvements in the quality of life. The project described is a large-scale one that involves many countries and many researchers, making governance and data management crucial to achieving data availability and data security. The article discusses the strategies and instruments used, and addresses the many considerations from both ethical sides and when building a data management plan and decisions on sharing data. The authors behind the article are Lucas Hertzog, Jenny Chen-Charles, Camille Wittesaele, Kristen de Graaf, Raylene Titus, Jane Kelly, Nontokozo Langwenya, Lauren Baerecke, Boladé Hamed Banougnin, Wylene Saal, John Southall, Lucie Cluver, and Elona Toska. Many of these are affiliated to the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and some are connected to the University of Oxford. It is important to mention that in addition to the central participation from South Africa and the UK, the project is based on partnerships with researchers in Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Lesotho, Tanzania, and Kenya.
Submissions of papers for the IASSIST Quarterly are always very welcome. We welcome input from IASSIST conferences or other conferences and workshops, from local presentations or papers especially written for the IQ. When you are preparing such a presentation, give a thought to turning your one-time presentation into a lasting contribution. Doing that after the event also gives you the opportunity of improving your work after feedback. We encourage you to login or create an author profile at https://www.iassistquarterly.com (our Open Journal System application). We permit authors to have \u27deep links\u27 into the IQ as well as deposition of the paper in your local repository. Chairing a conference session or workshop with the purpose of aggregating and integrating papers for a special issue IQ is also much appreciated as the information reaches many more people than the limited number of session participants and will be readily available on the IASSIST Quarterly website at https://www.iassistquarterly.com. Should you be interested in compiling a special issue for the IQ as guest editor(s) you can also contact the IQ. Take a look at the instructions, layout, and contact at:
https://www.iassistquarterly.com/index.php/iassist/about/submissions
On a personal note, I have since 1997 been the editor of the IASSIST Quarterly. All good things must end. New people will take over and improve the journal. I find there have been many improvements in the IQ during my tenure. Special thanks to my good friends Walter and Jane for their work on the journal. For many years, Walter Piovesan helped with layout and production, and he established contact with the Open Journal System staff before retiring from the IQ editorial team. Jane Roberts turned my Danglish into English in my IQ editorials. I am very happy to quit now, especially because you IASSISTers will have very competent replacements in Michele Hayslett and Ofira Schwartz. They have already for long worked behind the scenes at IQ, and have also edited the recent special issue on Systemic Racism. The IQ is in good hands.
Karsten Boye Rasmussen - June 202
Getting in touch with metadata: a DDI subset for FAIR metadata production in clinical psychology
Full text linkTo address metadata with researchers it is important to use models that include familiar domain concepts. In the Social Sciences, the DDI is a well-accepted source of such domain concepts. To create FAIR data and metadata, we need to establish a compact set of DDI elements that fit the requirements in projects and are likely to be adopted by researchers inexperienced with metadata creation. Over time, we have engaged in interviews and data description sessions with research groups in the Social Sciences, identifying a manageable DDI subset. A recent Clinical Psychology project, TOGETHER, dealing with risk assessment for hereditary cancer, considered the inclusion of a DDI subset for the production of metadata that are timely and interoperable with data publication initiatives in the same domain. Taking a DDI subset identified by the data curators, we make a preliminary assessment of its use as a realistic effort on the part of researchers, taking into consideration the metadata created in two data description sessions, the effort involved, and overall metadata quality. A follow-up questionnaire was used to assess the perspectives of researchers regarding data description
RETRACTION NOTICE: Retraction of Mankone, A. M. (2023). Data protection and right to privacy legislation in Kenya. IASSIST Quarterly, 47(3-4). https://doi.org/10.29173/iq1080 for plagiarism (retraction made 10/2024).
No full textThe editorial staff of the IASSIST Quarterly received a charge of plagiarism for this article in September 2024, from Mr. Shadrack Mutisya, a former subordinate of Mr. Mankone. Upon receiving a draft of the paper from Mr. Mutisya, editorial staff compared its similarity to the published article using the tool iThenticate and found a 94% level of similarity between the two. Mr. Mankone has admitted to our editorial staff that he submitted his subordinate’s paper as his own without crediting Mr. Mutisya. Co-authorship being unsatisfactory to Mr. Mutisya, the IQ is retracting the article altogether. Notice has been sent to the journal’s indexing services. This being Mr. Mankone’s only paper in the IQ, this is the only paper affected. Mr. Mankone has been permanently banned from publishing with the IQ.
Michele Hayslett and Ofira Schwartz, Editor
Expanding our perspective: Building a sustainable metadata culture
Full text linkThe Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation (ISRDI) at the University of Minnesota submitted an application for approval to the Core Trust Seal (CTS) in June 2022. In the course of the protracted process to prepare ISRDI materials for the application, we learned five lessons that expanded our perspective on the role of the archive within our organization and committed our institute to building a sustainable metadata culture. By taking the time to review the specialized nature of ISRDI as it developed over time, clarify and document the processes that developed as the intitute matured and expanded, and applying the standards and guidelines supported by the CTS, ISDRI is now in a position to more easily identify areas of future process development and address outstanding needs in terms of our documentation and preservation of our work. These lessons are applicable to research organizations that include the responsibility to preserve a record of their work in the mid- and long-term
Security and preservation of election data in Nigeria in the fourth industrial revolution
Full text linkA fraud-free and credible election is a necessary ingredient to the growth of democracy. Election malpractices and violence, from 1959 till date, have offered major challenges to the Nigerian political system. To achieve a sustainable democracy in Nigeria, it is important to build public trust by ensuring the security and preservation of electoral data. The world has gradually moved into the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), an era where artificial intelligence, big data, internet of things, robotics, blockchain, cloud computing and 3-D printing technologies dictate the pace of activities in all walks of life. This paper suggests specific 4IR technologies solutions to electoral data security and preservation challenges. It also suggests that the Nigerian Government announce policies to serve as catalysts for the Independent National Electoral Commission and stakeholders to harness these developments to ensure that electoral processes benefit from these technologies
Editor\u27s notes: FAIR BOT. As metadata is data is metadata is data ...
No full textWelcome to the first issue of IASSIST Quarterly for the year 2023 - IQ vol. 47(1).
The last article in this issue has in the title the FAIR acronym that stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. These are the concepts most often focused on by our articles in the IQ and FAIR has an extra emphasis in this issue. The first article introduces and demonstrates a shared vocabulary for data points where the need arose after confusions about data and metadata. Basically, I find that the most valuable virtue of well-structured data – I deliberately use a fuzzy term to save you from long excursions here in the editor\u27s notes – is that other well-structured data can benefit from use of the same software. Similarly, well-structured metadata can benefit from the same software. I also see this as the driver for the second article, on time series data and description. Sometimes, the software mentioned is the same software in both instances as metadata is treated as data or vice versa. This allows for new levels of data-driven machine actions. These days universities are busy investigating and discussing the latest chatbots. I find many of the approaches restrictive and prefer to support the inclusive ones. Likewise, I also expect and look forward to bots having great relevance for the future implementation of FAIR principles.
The first article is on data and metadata by George Alter, Flavio Rizzolo, and Kathi Schleidt and has the title ‘View points on data points: A shared vocabulary for cross-domain conversations on data and metadata’. The authors have observed that sharing data across scientific domains is often impeded by differences in the language used to describe data and metadata. To avoid confusion, the authors develop a terminology. Part of the confusion concerns disagreement about the boundaries between data and metadata; and that what is metadata in one domain can be data in another. The shift between data and metadata is what they name as ‘semantic transposition’. I find that such shifts are a virtue and a strength and as the authors say, there is no fixed boundary between data and metadata, and both can be acted upon by people and machines. The article draws on and refers to many other standards and developments, most cited are the data model of Observations and Measurements (ISO 19156) and tools of the Data Documentation Initiative’s Cross Domain Integration (DDI-CDI). The article is thorough and explanatory with many examples and diagrams for learning, including examples of transformations between the formats: wide, long, and multidimensional. The long format of entity-attribute-value has the value domain restricted by the attribute, and in examples time and source are added, which demonstrates how further metadata enter the format. When transposing to the wide format, this is a more familiar data matrix where the same value domain applies to the complete column. The multidimensional format with facets is for most readers the familiar aggregations published by statistical agencies. The authors argue that their domain-independent vocabulary enables the cross-domain conversation. George Alter is Research Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Flavio Rizzolo is Senior Data Science Architect for Statistics Canada. Kathi Schleidt is a data scientist and the founder of DataCove.
The format discussion in the first article is also the point of the second paper on ‘Modernizing data management at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has a focus on time series and Daniel W. Gillman and Clayton Waring (both from the BLS) view time series data as a combination of three components: A measure element; an element for person, places, and things (PPT); and a time element. In the paper Gillman and Waring also describe the conceptual model (UML) and the design and features of the system. First, they go back in history to the 1970s and the Codd relational model and to the standards developed and refined after 2000. You will not be surprised to find here among the references also the Data Documentation Initiative’s Cross Domain Integration (DDI-CDI). The mission is: ‘to find a simple and intuitive way to store and organize statistical data with the goal of making it easy to find and use the data’. A semantic approach is adopted, i.e. the focus is on the meaning of the data based upon the ‘Measures / People-Places-Things / Time’ model. Detailed examples show how PPT are categories of dimensions, for instance ‘nurse’ is in the Standard Occupational Classification and \u27hospital\u27 in the North American Industry Classification System. The paper – like the first paper – also refers to multidimensional structures. The modernization described at BLS is expected to be released in early 2023.
The third paper is by João Aguiar Castro, Joana Rodrigues, Paula Mena Matos, Célia Sales, and Cristina Ribeiro where all authors are affiliated with the University of Porto. Like the earlier articles this also references the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) with a focus on the concepts behind the FAIR acronym: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. The title is: ‘Getting in touch with metadata: a DDI subset for FAIR metadata production in clinical psychology’. Clinical psychology is not an area frequently occurring in IASSIST Quarterly, but it turns out that the project described started with interviews and data description sessions with research groups in the Social Sciences for identifying a manageable DDI subset. The project also draws on other projects such as TAIL, TOGETHER, and Dendro. The TAIL project concerned the integration metadata tools in the research workflow and assessed the requirements of researchers from different domains. TOGETHER was a project in the psycho-oncology domain and family-centered care for hereditary cancer. As most researchers showed to be inexperienced with metadata, they concentrated on a DDI subset that meant that FAIR metadata would be available for deposit. Support for researchers is essential as the they have the domain expertise and can create highly detailed descriptions. On the other hand, data curators can ensure that the metadata follow the rules of FAIR. This was achieved by embedding the Dendro platform in the research workflow, where creation of metadata is performed in an incremental description of the data. The article includes screenshots of the user interface showing the choice of vocabularies. The approach and the adoption of a DDI subset produced more comprehensive metadata than is usually available.
Submissions of papers for the IASSIST Quarterly are always very welcome. We welcome input from IASSIST conferences or other conferences and workshops, from local presentations or papers especially written for the IQ. When you are preparing such a presentation, give a thought to turning your one-time presentation into a lasting contribution. Doing that after the event also gives you the opportunity of improving your work after feedback. We encourage you to login or create an author profile at https://www.iassistquarterly.com (our Open Journal System application). We permit authors to have \u27deep links\u27 into the IQ as well as deposition of the paper in your local repository. Chairing a conference session or workshop with the purpose of aggregating and integrating papers for a special issue IQ is also much appreciated as the information reaches many more people than the limited number of session participants and will be readily available on the IASSIST Quarterly website at https://www.iassistquarterly.com. Authors are very welcome to take a look at the instructions and layout:
https://www.iassistquarterly.com/index.php/iassist/about/submissions
Authors can also contact me directly via e-mail: [email protected]. Should you be interested in compiling a special issue for the IQ as guest editor(s) I will also be delighted to hear from you.
Karsten Boye Rasmussen - March 2023
View points on data points: A shared vocabulary for cross-domain conversations on data and metadata
Full text linkSharing data across scientific domains is often impeded by differences in the language used to describe data and metadata. We argue that disagreements over the boundary between data and metadata are a common source of confusion. Information appearing as data in one domain may be considered metadata in another domain, a process that we call “semantic transposition.” To promote greater understanding, we develop new terminology for describing how data and metadata are structured, and we show how it can be applied to a variety of widely used data formats. Our approach builds upon previous work, such as the Observations and Measurements (ISO 19156) data model. We rely on tools from the Data Documentation Initiative’s Cross Domain Integration (DDI-CDI) to illustrate how the same data can be represented in different ways, and how information considered data in one format can become metadata in another format
Much new research, and advances for the IQ
Full text linkWelcome to this special double issue of IASSIST Quarterly for the year 2023, IQ vol. 47(3-4).
We are delighted to close out the year by offering the second special issue of the IASSIST Quarterly to showcase articles from the Africa workshop. Articles in this issue were presented in the second Africa Workshop which was held in Ibadan, Nigeria, in October 2022. Guest editors Winny Nekesa and Robert Stalone Buwule have again expertly steered the editorial process to bring us this research.
While their Guest Editors’ Notes describe the included articles, we would like to use this space to share a number of announcements about administrative work on the journal. First, please join us in welcoming four new Editorial Board members for a four-year term:
Robert Stalone Buwule, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda
Winny Nekesa, National Social Security Fund, Uganda
Deborah Wiltshire, GESIS, Germany, and
Ryan Womack, Rutgers University, United States
With these appointments, we achieve two goals. First, we stagger the terms of service of Board members so that only half will roll off the Board at any one time, ensuring continuity of knowledge moving forward. Second, we better diversify geographic representation on the Board to reflect IASSIST’s international membership. Winny and Robert bring experience as IQ guest editors to the Board. Deborah and Ryan bring perspective from the IASSIST Administrative Committee.
Over the coming year, IQ editorial staff and Board members will be exploring a variety of changes to the journal, many of which were proposed by you, the membership. We’ll keep you informed as we make decisions on various of those suggestions. Several advances that we have already accomplished are to behind-the-scenes processes but may directly benefit authors who publish with us as well you, our readers.
Working retrospectively to the last issue, 47(2), as well as for all issues going forward, the editorial staff have published the reference lists of all articles as metadata. This complies with I4OC, a standard that asks for citations to be structured, separable, shareable, and freely accessible (to both human and automated harvesting), resulting in citations that are index-able and searchable. Citation-tracking services like Crossref also require this. The end result is that people searching for any of the sources listed in our articles will find our articles, which over time may result in greater research impact for our authors. Reference linking will also expose articles to new tools, such as OpenAlex, an open citation metrics tool that can help measure impact. We thank our managing editor, Phillip Ndhlovu, for his effort in effecting this change.
The second change was made by the Library Open Publishing and Open Education staff at the University of Alberta, whose work supports the Open Journal System platform on which the journal is hosted. Their efforts not only keep journal production flowing smoothly, they work continually to improve the technical systems to uphold and improve open access to our content. In this case, they have implemented a Research Organization Registry (ROR) feature to allow authors to select their organizational affiliations from the list of organizations in ROR. This will not only speed the information input authors must complete during submission, but also standardize it to be represented consistently within the journal, and make it clear and accurate for sharing in external systems such as DOAJ and CrossRef.
Finally, we want to mention a new content feature premiering in this issue. Following the receipt of a Letter to the Editor (to our knowledge the first ever), we’ve added a new section to the journal’s infrastructure to accommodate such conversations. We hope you will enjoy reading this commentary which extends the implications of the Hertzog, et al. article in 47(2) to a different type of personally identifiable data, DNA. We invite you to take advantage of the option to use this feature in future to correspond with our articles.
We wish you all the best for whichever end-of-year holidays you celebrate! We look forward to showcasing your work through the IQ in the coming new year, both in the research you submit for publication and in implementing your ideas for evolving the journal’s content and production.
Ofira Schwartz and Michele Hayslett, December 202