Data Documents

• Published in: Knowledge organization Vol. 48; no. 4; pp. 307 - 328
• Main Authors: Farace, Dominic, Prost, Hélène, Zane, Antonella, Hjørland, Birger
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wuerzburg Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH und Co KG 2021; Ergon Verlag
• Subjects: Bibliometrics; Citation indexes; Datasets; Digital libraries; Grey literature; Humanities and Social Sciences; Information professionals; Knowledge organization; Librarians; Library and information science; Library and information sciences; Medical libraries; Metadata; Open access; Research data management; Scholarly publishing; Science; Software; DIKW model; bibliography; data; document formats
• ISSN: 0943-7444
• DOI: 10.5771/0943-7444-2021-4-307

This article presents and discusses different kinds of data documents, including data sets, data studies, data papers and data journals. It provides descriptive and bibliometric data on different kinds of data documents and discusses the theoretical and philosophical problems by classifying documents according to the DIKW model (data documents, information documents, knowl­edge documents and wisdom documents). Data documents are, on the one hand, an established category today, even with its own data citation index (DCI). On the other hand, data documents have blurred boundaries in relation to other kinds of documents and seem sometimes to be understood from the problematic philosophical assumption that a datum can be understood as “a single, fixed truth, valid for everyone, everywhere, at all times”