Why they shared: recovering early arguments for sharing social scientific data
- PMID: 33720006
- DOI: 10.1017/S0269889720000204
Why they shared: recovering early arguments for sharing social scientific data
Abstract
Most social scientists today think of data sharing as an ethical imperative essential to making social science more transparent, verifiable, and replicable. But what moved the architects of some of the U.S.'s first university-based social scientific research institutions, the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR), and its spin-off, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), to share their data? Relying primarily on archived records, unpublished personal papers, and oral histories, I show that Angus Campbell, Warren Miller, Philip Converse, and others understood sharing data not as an ethical imperative intrinsic to social science but as a useful means to the diverse ends of financial stability, scholarly and institutional autonomy, and epistemological reproduction. I conclude that data sharing must be evaluated not only on the basis of the scientific ideals its supporters affirm, but also on the professional objectives it serves.
Keywords: Angus Campbell; Data sharing; Institute for Social Research (ISR); Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR); University of Michigan; Warren Miller; political science; social science history.
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