How to make sure your data publishing is reputable

The Big Crunch
Nov 4 · 3 min read

In the digital age, anyone can be a publisher. The traditional gatekeepers of news or data such as media institutions and academics are no longer the main moderators of publicly circulated and published content. With lower barriers to entry there is a greater diversity of published content but also more content of questionable quality. More low quality content and in some cases, deliberately malicious content means readers are, justifiably, more suspicious of information they read online particularly data publishing. There is good reason for this mistrust, we’ve written more on this topic of fake data and public distrust of information in our blog here.

Your readers are discerning and need to be able to see that the information you’re publishing is credible. There is also a growing demand from readers, particularly in data publishing, to understand how the conclusions were drawn. When readers trust what you publish and can see you’ve done accurate research they are more likely to share your data or link back to it. Publishing credible and well sourced content is not just for academics or journalists, there is now a demand that anyone publishing do so responsibly and credibly.

The information age has empowered publishers, yet, as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. So, as a publisher of information and data there is a certain responsibility to ensure that what you publish is credible.

What does it mean to publish credible information and how can you make sure your data publishing is seen as reputable by your readers?

How to make sure your data publishing is seen as reputable:

1. Show the source of the data

Revealing the underlying source of the information is vital in allowing your readers to understand how you’ve come to those conclusions. If your data came from a government research body, a news article or a survey you’ve conducted readers need to know this to be able to judge what they are reading. If you’ve collected the data yourself make it clear to your readers that they are looking at primary data and explain your method [3].

2. Allow the reader to access the source of the data

Just showing where you sourced the information or sharing a URL is a positive step but it’s not enough. Allowing readers to see exactly how the information was derived, calculated or where it was sourced means they can understand how you’ve drawn your conclusions. If there are specific methods for how the data was collected and if you’ve made any assumptions, revealing the underlying data allows readers to have more faith in your interpretation if they can reach their own conclusions too. A research site which does this well is Our World in Data, which provides full access to the underlying data and methods of research.

3. Date your work

This seems like an obvious point, readers need to be able to see how current the published article is to have context [1]. As well as the date of publication, it is also important to show the date of the data you’re basing your conclusions on so that readers can have the appropriate context and have no doubts about the data.

4. Make it clear who the author is

Are you personally the author, is it from a company perspective, is it an academic institution backing the article? Consider that your readers are trying to understand the intention and aim of the article, make it easy for your readers to check your credentials [2].

Making it easy for your readers to quickly check the validity of your data publishing shouldn’t be time-consuming.

The Big Crunch is building tools to make it easy to link to the source of your data. Readers can click through to see the underlying data and follow the data lineage. This means it is much easier for you to publish accurately sourced data and easier for your readers to interrogate the sources and establish that it is trustworthy.

Through making it easier to accurately link data and reveal the sources, our aim is to restore trust in online publishing and make it easier for more reputable content to be shared online.

Learn more about The Big Crunch and our mission here.

Sources:

  1. https://www.thoughtco.com/gauging-website-reliability-2073838
  2. https://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/credible-sources/
  3. http://www.easybib.com/guides/students/writing-guide/ii-research/c-evaluating-sources-for-credibility/
  4. https://peopledevelopmentmagazine.com/2016/07/10/information-internet/
The Big Crunch

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Where data meets the internet. We’re talking about all things data and the future of data online. https://bigcrunch.io/

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