Transparency and quality assessment of research data in post-Soviet area studies: The potential of an interactive online platform

Abstract

The social sciences are increasingly addressing the quality of research data and debating ways to improve data transparency, that is, the availability of original research data to corroborate claims made in academic publications. This article offers a systematic discussion of related problems and challenges with the example of post-Soviet area studies. It goes on to examine ways to improve data transparency. Although the Internet has a huge potential for linking research with resulting publications and underlying data as well as for organizing a collective discussion around the research, current data repositories do not truly go beyond basic upload and download functions for datasets. With the example of the Discuss Data project, this article gives an overview of more elaborated features that can easily be implemented to improve the visibility and quality assessment of data collections. Finally, it discusses ethical concerns about data transparency related to privacy protection and copyrights.

The framing of IMF and World Bank in political reform debates: The role of political orientation and policy fields in the cases of Russia and Ukraine

“…the person making the respective statement in a parliamentary debate) and all policy fields related to the discussion of the role of IMF, World Bank, WHO or ILO have been coded. 5 The codebook and quantitative results of the content analysis will soon be available online at www.discuss-data.net (for details on Discuss Data see Heinrich et al, 2019; Heinrich and Klein, this issue).…”

Challenges for the management of qualitative and quantitative data: The example of social policy–related data collections

“…Based on the underlying cause, Heinrich et al (2019) differentiate three quality problems concerning research data: (1) intentionally falsified data, (2) unintended mistakes in the data and (3) incomplete and thus misleading data.…”

“…Second, many of the problems of data interpretation are specific to individual analyses and related academic publications. An assessment of the reliability of data collection and data interpretation is often not available to the broader academic community (Heinrich et al, 2019: 140). In addition, data collections related to qualitative research methods often cannot (easily) be prepared for online publication in the context of transparency initiatives.…”

“…With the upload of qualitative data collections (e.g. medical records, social security information), the question of privacy protection requires special attention (for more information, see Heinrich et al, 2019: 141–143). In contrast to quantitative research, qualitative research is often based on rather detailed profiles of research participants.…”

“…One project that tries to tackle the above-mentioned problems through providing a single platform where research data are not only shared, but actively discussed and assessed, is ‘Discuss Data’, an ‘Open Platform for the Interactive Discussion of Research Data Quality (on the example of area studies on the post-Soviet region)’ created and operated by the Göttingen State and University Library and the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen. 3 As Heinrich et al (2019: 141) state, Discuss Data aims to create an online platform that combines the publication of research data not only with a documentation of the data collection process but also with an interactive place of communication to discuss, evaluate, and contextualise these research data. The expert community will be enabled to indicate faulty or misleading data, to recommend complementary datasets (in case of gaps in the data collection) and to discuss extensively the validity, applicability, and interpretation of the data.…”