Provenance, End-User Trust and Reuse: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

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.