| Popis: |
This study explored the reuse of existing quantitative data in original social sciences research in Taiwan. Using the 2015 TSSCI List as the basis of journal selection, this study focused on 57 journals listed under the subject divisions of economics, political science, sociology, education, and psychology. Journal issues published between 2001 and 2015 were manually scanned to identify data reuse papers. The characteristics of the reuse papers and the cited data were recorded for the subsequent subject division-level and subject discipline-level analyses. A total of 1,484 reuse papers were identified, which accounted for 17.38% of the total empirical study papers. Among the five subject divisions, economics and political science had the highest percentages of data reuse, while psychology had the lowest. Those reuse papers together cited 2,990 datasets. Most of the datasets were used in economics and political science papers. Further, these two subject divisions had noticeably larger proportions of papers that use more than one dataset. In contrast, papers using only one dataset were the majority for the rest. In regards to data source and data type, datasets originated from government agencies as well as data generated from business operations accounted for the majority of the cited data, but significant differences existed among those subjects. As opposed to the frequently used business and series survey data, data generated from independent research projects as well as data that were non-continuous and one-time in nature were rarely reused in social sciences research. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that data services for social sciences research should focus more on large-scaled continuous data generated from governments and research institutions. A service mechanism that bridges users and data providers from public and private sectors would also enhance data reuse and increase the value of existing data. |
