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Goals and Research Questions

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Nic edited this page Jul 22, 2020 · 4 revisions

Goals and research questions

The purpose of our original study was to understand how Open Government Data (OGD) is being used in academic research and explore ways to realize the potentials of OGD in advancing data-driven academic research. We used literature mining to achieve this.

A publication of this original study is here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.03074.pdf

The goals of this project for 2020 are:

  • Replicate the methods from 2017 to update the dataset
  • Update the original dataset to determine how OGD were cited, mentioned, or acknowledged in the paper
  • Survey users of the data to better understand and support their needs
  • Publish a synthesis of the text mining and survey

Target venue for publication:

  • Government Information Quarterly
  • JASIST

To update the data:

  • Re-execute the searches (using strings that An provides) - this should be limited to ONLY new pubs (see An's notes for when she created a cut-off date for the previous study)
  • Categorize the new publications according to our existing typology of uses
  • Update reported descriptive statistics
  • Revisit the original dataset and add information about how OGD were cited, mentioned, or acknowledged in the paper

In parallel we will develop and send a survey to authors from original study and new study:

  • Extract all contact information (email addresses) from original study
  • Nic will develop survey on Qualtrics and we will send to the first wave of participants
  • Once the new data are collected we can send a second wave of survey invitations to new authors to participate in the survey

Literature mining can give us a holistic view of current landscape of OGD use in academia. Through literature mining, we aim to answer the following research questions:

  • What fields of academic research are using OGD? (this is determined by the journal's discipline / topic area)
  • Where are the authors who use OGD in their research?
  • What sources of OGD are used in which types of academic fields? (source is determined by OGD portal)
  • What purposes do OGD serve in academic research?
  • How much impact has OGD made through advancing academic research?
  • How do researchers cite, mention, or refer to OGD in a scientific publication

Online survey supports literature mining by exploring a subset of research questions answered by literature review from users’ side. The population of this study is researchers working in Universities and research centers all over the world. Through online survey, we aim to better understand the experience of users finding, accessing, and using OGD in their research. We should use the main author of each study to systematically gather a sample for the survey.

The Online survey complements literature mining by getting at researchers’ researchers awareness of, intentions to use, and challenges of use OGD.

  • How do researchers grow aware of OGD?
  • What challenges do researchers encounter when using OGD in their research?
  • What are the factors influencing researchers’ decision to use OGD in research?
  • What are the ways to improve OGD use in research?

Online survey also captures respondents who do not use OGD and reveals the reasons why they do not use OGD in their research.

  • What are the factors influencing researchers’ decision to not use OGD in research?

Another step we could take - if time allows - is to interview respondents to the survey.

Interview complements online survey and literature mining by providing detailed and in-depth information regarding the types of OGD researchers use, the purposes of OGD in research, challenges and expectations researchers have on OGD, and factors influencing researchers’ intentions to use OGD:

  • What types (themes/ formats/ sources) of OGD do researchers use?
  • What purposes do OGD serve in academic research?
  • How do researchers grow aware of OGD?
  • What challenges do researchers encounter when using OGD in their research?
  • What are the integration challenges, if any, researchers encounter in their OGD use?
  • What expectations researchers bring to the use of OGD in their research?
  • What are the factors influencing researchers’ decision to use OGD in research?
  • What are the ways to improve OGD use in research?

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