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Data access--what is data and who decides?

Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 10:37 am
by malahtun
People participating in this website need to discuss the issue of data access. JETS states that authors need to make their data available in order to get their work published. The data access requirement raises several concerns. An important one is: What counts as “data”? Data access is relatively easy to facilitate if the “data” consist of an Excel spreadsheet or STATA file. But for a significant number of scholars, “data” exist, not in field notes or transcripts, but “in the act of spending time with and listening to people” (Cramer, 2015; Pachirat 2015). The next important question is: who decides what counts as data? the author, or the editor? And if an article uses multiple methods, do the data involved with each method need to be shared?