A hermeneutic dialogical understanding of data reuse across different access regimes

Policy and scholarly discourse emphasizing the panacea of Open (research) Data shapes expectations, and directs and legitimizes investments in data technologies and infrastructures. This is driven by the hope that Open Data will quicken the pace of research and innovation through data reuse, and that they do so more effectively than other access regimes, such as stewarded and proprietary data. Drawing on Leonelli's relational framework and Gadamer's hermeneutical conceptualization of a horizon of meanings, data reuse can be understood as a fitting process. In the latter, a researcher engages in a hermeneutical dialogical interaction with the data's affordances with the goal of making a scientific contribution. Moreover, the fitting process takes place within a researcher's bounded individual horizon (BIH), defined as an intentional orientation towards the future; it is made up of the relations and circumstances that modulate each researcher's unique situation. Seen thus, data reuse is likely to result from the persistence of a researcher's desire or need to make a scientific contribution, independently of the data access regime. What is more, the necessary interaction between potential reusers and data curators or owners can open up the interpretive affordances of data in the context of proprietary and stewarded data, making data more mutable compared to the relative immutability of data in open repositories. Accordingly, stewarded data, with the proper curation and digital preservation services, might provide a more sustainable form of sharing and reusing data where privacy is at stake.