Browsing by Author "Fear, Kathleen"

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    Provenance and credibility in scientific data repositories
    (Archival Science, 2012) Fear, Kathleen; Donaldson, Devan Ray
    Despite a long history of rich theoretical work on provenance, empirical research regarding users’ interactions with and judgments based upon provenance information in archives with scientific data is extremely limited. This article focuses on the relationship between provenance and credibility (i.e., trustworthiness and expertise) for scientists. Toward this end, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with seventeen proteomics researchers who interact with data from ProteomeCommons.org, a large online repository. To analyze the resulting interview data, the authors apply Brian Hilligoss and Soo Young Rieh’s empirically tested theoretical framework for user credibility assessment. Findings from this study suggest that together with other information provided in ProteomeCommons.org and subjects’ own experiences and prior knowledge, provenance allows users to determine the credibility of datasets. Implications of this study stress the importance of the archival perspective of provenance and archival bond for aiding scientists in their credibility assessments of data housed in scientific data repositories.
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    Provenance, End-User Trust and Reuse: An Empirical Investigation
    (USENIX, 2011) Donaldson, Devan Ray; Fear, Kathleen
    Provenance theorists and practitioners assume that provenance is essential for trust in and reuse of data. However, little empirical research has been conducted to more closely examine this assumption. This qualitative study explores how provenance affects end-users’ trust in and reuse of data. Toward this end, the authors conducted semi- structured interviews with 17 proteomics researchers who interact with data from ProteomeCommons.org, a large scientific data repository. Empirical findings from this study suggest that provenance does help end-users gauge the trustworthiness of data and build their confidence in reusing data. However, provenance also needs to be accompanied by other kinds of information, including: more specific data quality information, the data itself, and author reputation information. Implications of this study stress the value of end-user studies in provenance research, specifically to assess the ‘real-world’ impact of provenance encoded and communicated to end-users in systems.