Distance and other metaphors about reuse of research data

Christine Borgman (UCLA) and Paul Groth (UvA) have written a major piece for the Harvard Data Science Review called ‘From data creator to data reuser: distance matters’. This will be valuable for researchers and policy makers. They use the metaphor of ‘distance’ (e.g. methodological  or temporal) to understand the challenges of sharing and re-using data.

I was invited (as were eight more people from around the world) to respond. I drafted my commentary about six weeks after Trump’s inauguration. I suggest we need to additional democratic distance. My commentary warns of the dangers to data (and to science in the broadest sense) when universities are vilified, facts and denied, and data are being destroyed, weaponized or monetized. I also suggest three other metaphors to describe data reuse: recycling, sharing and gift giving.