1. Fitness for use: Users of the U. S
Fitness for use: Users of the U.S. Geological Survey Science Data Catalog
Wade Bishop, Ph.D.
School of Information Sciences
University of Tennessee
September 21, 2017
Research Data Alliance

2. Purpose
The purpose of this study to determine how USGS re-users determine fitness for use of data.

3. Rationale
To determine suitability for a particular application or purpose a user must know details about the data, including data quality, scale, interoperability, cost, metadata, syntactic and semantic heterogeneity, and others (Chrisman, 1984; Veregin, 1999).
Although this seems reasonably easy to accomplish, communication paths (producer → user) are rarely direct, semantics vary, there are temporal lags between data creation and use, and the technical expertise of users varies significantly, potentially diminishing their abilities to make an informed evaluation (Bishop & Grubesic, 2016).
Access and use issues multiply for aggregators of data (e.g., the USGS Science Data Catalog).
A framework with the most vital facets of fitness for use would outline considerations for the functionality and design of data, metadata, and also the tools used to access both.

4. Study
The study will employ interviews with researchers using USGS data (i.e., Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center).
These researchers are critical agents as secondary users of data (i.e., data collected by other researchers).

5. Planned Analyses
The interviews will need transcription, coding, and analyses to produce a fitness for use framework for USGS data.
The interviews will be coded using the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reuseable) data principles ( as well as other data fitness for use factors.

6. Interview Questionnaire
Job-related demographics
What is your current job title?
How many years in total have you been working in your current job?
How many years in total have you been working with earth science data?
Describe your work setting?
Please indicate your credentials and degrees.
Please provide any other educational or training you have received that is applicable to performing your job.

7. Interview Questionnaire (continued)
Think of a recent search for data (or more). The following questions will determine how you discovered and evaluated that data for fitness for use.
Findability
How did you find the data?
Did the data have a persistent identifier (i.e., a long-lasting unique reference to an objects location) (e.g., DOI; PURL)?
Did the data have metadata?
Did the metadata help you locate the data?
Accessibility
How did you access the data?
Was the data in an open format (e.g., Public Domain, Attribution License, and so forth)?
Was the data free?
Did the data have use constraints (e.g., limitations of use)?
Was the metadata accessible?

8. Interview Questionnaire (continued)
Interoperability
Was the data in a useable format?
How was the data encoded and was it using encoding common to other data used in your research (i.e., same format))?
Was the data using shared controlled vocabularies, data dictionaries, and/or other common ontologies?
Was the data machine-actionable (e.g., to be processed without humans)?
Reusability
Were there any issues with the data that impacted reuse of the data (e.g., resolution)?
Did the data geographic scale used impact reuse of the data?
Did the coordinate systems used impact reuse of the data?
Did the metadata provide sufficient information for data reuse?
Closing
Please provide any other feedback about this project or data fitness for use:

9. This project’s potential implications
Creating a user-centered methodology to build other frameworks;
Contributing new knowledge of how scientists access and use science data; and
Producing a framework that apprises how best to meet the USGS users’ needs for at least Wood’s Hole users.