Public defence: Live Håndlykken Kvale

Data sharing requires collaboration on infrastructure and a knowledge exchange amongst stakeholders while these develop solutions aiming at increasing the quality of research through data curation. Divergent perspectives amongst key stakeholders on how and why data sharing is to take place create frictions in the collaboration and development of infrastructure.

In addition, new roles are emerging to facilitate data management and data curation. The professional identity of these struggle with combining and maintaining high-level expertise in multiple domains. The problem statement approaches these frictions by asking: How do the perspectives and expertise of key stakeholders involved in research data sharing affect the collaboration and knowledge transfer amongst these?

By addressing this question, the thesis aims at understanding the relation between the perspectives and expertise of key stakeholders involved in research data sharing and how these perspectives affect the collaboration and knowledge transfer amongst the stakeholders.

Designed as a three-phased, modified Delphi study with data collection during a 14-month period, the study captured parts of the development of infrastructure for research data sharing. The participant group consisted of 24 expert shareholders disseminating their experiences and perspectives on the sharing and curation of research data through two interviews and one survey. The results are based on the final analysis of all the data material.

This is a thesis involving compilation of three articles and a narrative (Norwegian ‘kappe’). Each of the three articles addresses specific issues within research data sharing, namely by

• exploring the different data steward roles.
• analysing the multiple perspectives on data management plans as a facilitator for data curation and sharing.
• how personal privacy can be balanced with high quality research through the research data lifecycle.

The narrative lifts the perspective by addressing challenges that connect the three articles as a thread; divergent perspectives, roles, expertise, and the knowledge exchange taking place to facilitate research data sharing.

The thesis contributes to the understanding of research data curation as a key to high quality research. Policy and infrastructural development are interconnected with the different stakeholder groups and the motivations and expertise they hold.

However, the effort made to create strong infrastructural organizations risks changing the target. The findings show how additional goals and agendas amongst stakeholders risk obscuring the focus on research quality as the goal of data curation in interpretation and application of policy.

For providers of research data services to succeed, it is necessary to combine practice, learning and recognition. This is best achieved through maintaining active memberships in multiple communities; primarily, it is necessary to keep the combination of researcher and research support up to date and to apply best practice from both communities.

There is a need to rethink research data support services with a focus on the identity of data stewards as domain specialists and as data management experts. This requires community building and incentives for recognition of multiple memberships. Furthermore, different research support services within universities need to work together and re-think research data services based on a common goal of creating better research.

In collaborations and infrastructure development, agreements on standards, entities and definitions help to facilitate knowledge exchange. These must be developed dynamically through experience and application.

A transfer of knowledge occurs between the stakeholders as standards are applied and updated; this requires lines of communication where the stakeholders with multiple identities and stewardship communities function as translators of various perspectives and creators of common understandings.