arXiv subjects

Milena S. Golshan

Publications and source records attributed to Milena S. Golshan.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2020

Jupyter notebooks as discovery mechanisms for open science: Citation practices in the astronomy community

Citing data and software is a means to give scholarly credit and to facilitate access to research objects. Citation principles encourage authors to provide full descriptions of objects, with stable links, in their papers. As Jupyter notebooks aggregate data, software, and other objects, they may facilitate or hinder citation, credit, and access to data and software. We report on a study of references to Jupyter notebooks in astronomy over a 5-year period (2014-2018). References increased rapidly, but fewer than half of the references led to Jupyter notebooks that could be located and opened. Jupyter notebooks appear better suited to supporting the research process than to providing access to research objects. We recommend that authors cite individual data and software objects, and that they stabilize any notebooks cited in publications. Publishers should increase the number of citations allowed in papers and employ descriptive metadata-rich citation styles that facilitate credit and discovery.

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arXiv2018

Digital Data Archives as Knowledge Infrastructures: Mediating Data Sharing and Reuse

Digital archives are the preferred means for open access to research data. They play essential roles in knowledge infrastructures - robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions - but little is known about how they mediate information exchange between stakeholders. We open the "black box" of data archives by studying DANS, the Data Archiving and Networked Services institute of The Netherlands, which manages 50+ years of data from the social sciences, humanities, and other domains. Our interviews, weblogs, ethnography, and document analyses reveal that a few large contributors provide a steady flow of content, but most are academic researchers who submit datasets infrequently and often restrict access to their files. Consumers are a diverse group that overlaps minimally with contributors. Archivists devote about half their time to aiding contributors with curation processes and half to assisting consumers. Given the diversity and infrequency of usage, human assistance in curation and search remains essential. DANS' knowledge infrastructure encompasses public and private stakeholders who contribute, consume, harvest, and serve their data - many of whom did not exist at the time the DANS collections originated - reinforcing the need for continuous investment in digital data archives as their communities, technologies, and services evolve.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2018

Using the Jupyter Notebook as a Tool for Open Science: An Empirical Study

As scientific work becomes more computational and data intensive, research processes and results become more difficult to interpret and reproduce. In this poster, we show how the Jupyter notebook, a tool originally designed as a free version of Mathematica notebooks, has evolved to become a robust tool for scientists to share code, associated computation, and documentation.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2016

The Durability and Fragility of Knowledge Infrastructures: Lessons Learned from Astronomy

Infrastructures are not inherently durable or fragile, yet all are fragile over the long term. Durability requires care and maintenance of individual components and the links between them. Astronomy is an ideal domain in which to study knowledge infrastructures, due to its long history, transparency, and accumulation of observational data over a period of centuries. Research reported here draws upon a long-term study of scientific data practices to ask questions about the durability and fragility of infrastructures for data in astronomy. Methods include interviews, ethnography, and document analysis. As astronomy has become a digital science, the community has invested in shared instruments, data standards, digital archives, metadata and discovery services, and other relatively durable infrastructure components. Several features of data practices in astronomy contribute to the fragility of that infrastructure. These include different archiving practices between ground- and space-based missions, between sky surveys and investigator-led projects, and between observational and simulated data. Infrastructure components are tightly coupled, based on international agreements. However, the durability of these infrastructures relies on much invisible work - cataloging, metadata, and other labor conducted by information professionals. Continual investments in care and maintenance of the human and technical components of these infrastructures are necessary for sustainability.

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