The research data life cycle, legacy data, and dilemmas in research data management

Abstract

This paper presents findings from an interview study of research data managers in academic data archives. Our study examined policies and professional autonomy with a focus on dilemmas encountered in everyday work by data managers. We found that dilemmas arose at every stage of the research data lifecycle, and legacy data presents particularly vexing challenges. The iFields' emphasis on knowledge organization and representation provides insight into how data, used by scientists, are used to create knowledge. The iFields' disciplinary emphasis also encompasses the sociotechnical complexity of dilemmas that we found arise in research data management. Therefore, we posit that iSchools are positioned to contribute to data science education by teaching about ethics and infrastructure used to collect, organize, and disseminate data through problem-based learning.