Hot Database

When citing data, common assumptions, such as the assumption that all links are persistent, must be dispelled: as noted by Christine L. Borgman in Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World, The MIT Press, 2 January 2015, “n a print world, citations are stable links between fixed objects. In a digital world, citations are links between mutable objects. Neither the citing nor the cited object may be fixed in form or location indefinitely.” One way to ensure that the data germany rcs data being cited can be located is to use a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which ensures that even if the location of the data changes, the DOI will always link to the data that were used. Nevertheless, although a DOI can be assigned to any physical, digital or abstract entity, big data sources such as social media, are unlikely to have formal DOIs.

Researchers may find it harder to ascertain who the ‘owners’ of some of these ‘big data’ are – a necessity when it comes to properly acknowledging the owner and ascertaining the legal rights over re-use. Researchers need to make best efforts to find out the legal implications of re-publishing data, or parts of data, taking into account the license under which it has been published, copyright laws and where ‘fair dealing’ may or may not apply. Owners of social media data like Twitter and Facebook do have re-use terms in their small print, but these can change over time, so should always be consulted for each instance of data publication.