Modeling Users’ Data Usage Experiences from Scientific Literature

In the new data-intensive science paradigm, data infrastructures have been designed and built to collect, archive, publish, and analyze scientific data for a variety of users. Little attention, however, has been paid to users of these data infrastructures. This study endeavors to improve our understanding of these users’ data usage models through a content analysis of publications related to a frequently cited project in the data-intensive science, Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We find that 1) Content analysis of scientific publications could be a complementary method for researchers in HCI community; 2) although SDSS produced a large volume of astronomical data, users did not fully utilize these data; 3) users are not only consumers of scientific data, they are also producers; and 4) studies that can use multiple large scale data sources are relatively rare. Issues of data provenance and usability may prevent researchers from doing research that combines such data sources. Further HCI study of detailed usability issues associated with data infrastructures in the new paradigm is eagerly needed.