In many instances throughout my research I have found it difficult to find databases/resources on topics like historical facility information in the city of Santa Ana. By creating an archive that would track all relevant data on these facilities it will be easier for not only me but hopefully others to find information on these facilities. The archive format allows a good opportunity to share data in a concise and detailed manner that is hard to find for the research I have done.
Access to research, libraries, and/or journals is incredibly restricted. As I engage in research outside traditional academic pathways with other scholars in similar circumstances, I have become more attuned to these restrictions and have learned some ways to circumvent them. In my professional training in Education Research Departments, research data sharing was never discussed or raised as a possibility. In fact, data protection, data security, and data ownership were the operative practices.
My interest in research data sharing is the result of personal experience, feminist STS scholarship, and my encounters with the Fortuns who are leaders in this effort.
Social media use; interest in creating and curating archives; my identity as an artist and storyteller; my negative experiences with the IRB, specifically being asked to use protocols designed for medical research; the hegemony of quantitative research fields and positivist disciplines; the data needs of community organizations, community members, and nonprofits – although I think as researchers we often make assumptions about what these desires, needs, and capacities are, and how we can respond.
1) Feeling excluded from research data and publications due to paywalls due to my location; using "pirated" and printed textbooks; relying on an informal publishing economy for my reading and writing needs
2) The strangeness of not comparing fieldnotes in ethnographic data collection and analysis even when people work across thematically and geographically.
3) How early career scholars from geopolitically marginalized fields desire research data sharing even though they are well-aware of their work being stolen and not attributed
4) Questioning the imaginary of data sharing as being free-for-all and open-for-everything (which it often is not for very good reasons)