And every FAIR from FAIR sometimes declines? Tracking the rise of paradata to increase data sustainability
It is possible to argue that it is the 'R' in 'FAIR', standing for reusability, that makes the Findable, Accessible, and Interoperable worth the effort. Does it need to be, as Shakespeare writes, that every fair from fair sometime declines? What can be done to slower down the (perhaps inevitable) decline of data reusability?
These multiplex questions were in focus of Olle's and Lisa's talk on the European Association of Archaeologists' (EAA) 2020 conference in late August. The premise of the talk was that the intellectual horizons of primary and secondary data usage can be to some extent merged if repository users are supplied with auxiliary paradata about the processes and tools involved in creating the data, and this premise was investigated on the basis of a pilot study of paradata in archaeological data papers. The EAA 2020 conference was most exciting and the data-papers pilot study proved promising—it will likely be further developed in future CAPTURE activities and publications.