context.qmd

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title: Context
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Zack's bio and information about the CITF as institutional host.


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This project is directly relevant to ongoing developments in the open data landscape.
As the open data movement begins to mature, cracks are beginning to reveal themselves in the infrastructures we have built thus far.
Critical inspection is therefore necessary to help improve these systems and ensure that they may continue to support research activities.

Moreover, as a case study on community-oriented data-sharing initiatives, this project is well equipped to draw attention to the support structures (or lack thereof) for these efforts.
Specifically, the project will contribute to a better understanding of what resources are necessary to improve data-sharing at large and small scales.

The Maelstrom Project, which is a leading firm supporting data harmonization in epidemiology research, presents a great opportunity to explore how social and material factors are being accounted for in data-sharing initiatives.
Maelstrom operates by partering with research projects through initial consultations, which may then evolve into more comprehensive data harmonization work.
This is contingent on the value proposition that Maelstrom and partner projects ascertain will derive from harmonization, and evaluation of the feasibility of achieving these outcomes.
Already, this approach differentiates itself from "raw"[^1] open data-sharing in that it is directed by specific objectives, recognizes limitations of practical circumstances surrounding data's creation and the data harmonization efforts, and maintains the option to not proceed if it is deemed prudent to do so.
Maelstrom's partners represent a pool of potential cases that already grapple with issues concerning mediation of situated experiences in data-sharing, and which may be receptive to investigation of their research practices.

[^1]: I tentatively use the term "raw" data-sharing to mean acts of uploading and downloading spreadsheets among strangers via the web, which I tend to characterize as transactional (rather than commensal), as oriented toward compliance with the emerging bureaucratization of open science, and as relatively asocial in nature. See my [blog post](https://blog.zackbatist.info/2022/11/28/open-science-and-its-weird-conception-of-data/) where I rant about this in greater depth.

This is especially relevant in the Canadian context, where open science policy has been undergoing major revisions for several years now, and which inspires little confidence in researchers concerning expected outcomes.
Researchers have therefore taken it upon themselves to develop data-sharing initiatives on their own terms.
This entrepreneurialism has been a boon for community-driven data-sharing, but is also plagued by difficulties, which this project will be the first of its kind to explore.

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