Data sharing

Data sharing is a very general term for the transmission of data among people. Open data is one way in which data can be shared.

Status quo tends to assume a dichotomous opposition between those who produce data and those who use data.

Data producers:

Scattered and independent data producers ‘extract’ ‘raw data’ as per the pipeline analogy, and are limited by their scope of their individual interests. Field or lab based archaeologists (≈ data producers) are perceived as crafty problem solvers who improvise their ways around localized obstacles.

Data users:

Data users rely on and often integrate data produced by others, whose results tend to ‘step back’ to see ‘big picture’ trends. Digital archaeologists (≈ data users) are perceived as overly-prescriptive newcomers/outsiders whose contributions add novel value to existing work at the risk of formalizing/standardizing fluid datasets and producing disingenuously-simplified conclusions.

However, some problems with this approach are becoming evident: