Abstract

In today’s increasingly data-intensive academic environment, data is becoming the foundation of academic communication as a research outcome rather than a research by-product. However, there is a limit to guaranteeing actual data reuse only by expanding the data supply or securing accessibility. In order to overcome this, it is necessary to understand the data reuse behavior and data needs in-depth. Therefore, this study attempted to identify the major data reuse behavior and data needs among researchers. To this end, the authors of KCI papers among the data reuse documents of the Korea Social Science Data Archive (KOSSDA) for the past 3 years were targeted. An in-depth interview was conducted with 12 researchers who accepted the interview. As a result, factors considered when reusing data were personal, economic, technical, and social aspects, and it was found that the data itself was used or contextual information of the data was used depending on the purpose of data reuse. The path to acquiring data is a web-based source of information, and a path through informal communication can also be found. In terms of the data needs, it was found that they prefer English, the United States, and institutional producers. Also they have a clear preference for quantitative data from an interviewer-filled interpersonal interview survey method, rich metadata along with raw data, and data that contains identification information. However, due to the lack of confidence in the value, it is negative for the use of data with controlled access and use, and it is difficult to confirm a clear preference because there is no similar data available for selection in terms of size and freshness.