The Mysterious User of Research Data: Knitting Together Science and Technology Studies with Information and Computer Science

Open, accessible, and standardized research data are seen as essential scaffolding for open science. To support this vision, data repositories and scientific publishers have developed new tools to facilitate data discovery while funders and policy makers have implemented open science and data management policies. Users are often invoked as central to these efforts. Despite this stated focus, the concept of ‘user’ often remains an abstraction, visible only via anonymous ensembles of click behavior or data management plans. This chapter reports and reflects on a project which draws on science and technology studies (STS) to open up the black box of research data use, bridging the gap between designers of data search systems and researchers who (re-)use both data and these systems in their actual practices. Quantitative and qualitative studies conducted in the course of this project will be drawn upon to demonstrate the insights gained from an interdisciplinary approach.