Data in the making

(Part of Exploring challenges for New Big Science, Pufendorf Institute) In this sub-project we study how ESS works with developing data and metadata standards as well as software tools for the data expected to be created during the various research tasks.

In this sub-project we study how ESS works with developing data and metadata standards as well as software tools for the data expected to be created during the various research tasks. The challenges related to data curation, data handling and description are immense and increasingly big science is discursively associated with the fourth paradigm of e-science and big data. Notions of data and imaginations of what it is, how it should be dealt with, stored and accessed and for which reasons vary, but all relate to the idea that data is a central, or even fundamental, component in the processes stabilising science. From having been seen as a stepping stone on the way to producing the scientific results, increasingly data is itself positioned as the result. Consequently it engages a multitude of actors, tools, policies and so forth to manage it and turn it from an ephemeral procedural element into a stable component of science to be handled, stored and passed on. This sub-project investigates some of these processes, formations, and negotiations as they happen in the setting-up of ESS. Methodologically, the investigation will be based on expert interviews and document studies to capture data as it is made into a research object.