COMMS: Enabling Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) Data for the Social Sciences by Building an Open Ecosystem of Linked Repositories of Theory and Data Collection Instruments

☎ COMMS ☎ Enabling Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) Data for the Social Sciences by Building an Open Ecosystem of Linked Repositories of Theory and Data Collection Instruments Project description | Szilvia Zörgő & Gjalt-Jorn Peters COMMS stands for Connected Open Machine-readable Meaningful Science. It is an initiative striving for connected open machine-readable meaningful science in a way that is consistent with open science principles, which means we optimize for accessibility, forgoing e.g. centrally curated ontologies in favour of relatively light-weight solutions that lend themselves to decentralized implementation yet afford much of the same benefits. COMMS unites various people (COMMUNICATORs; Contributors to Open Machine-readable Methods and User-friendly Novel Infrastructure by Conceiving of and Applying Tools or Other Resources) to make the world a better place. The fundamental idea of COMMS is based on the perspectives underlying PsyCoRe. These are grounded in Open Science principles such as the importance of making data and materials available in a FAIR manner (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), acknowledging and facilitating diversity of researchers, methods, theory, and ontological and epistemological stances, and combined with the epistemological case for pluriformity and transient diversity. These parameters yield the need for open infrastructure to share theoretical and methodological documents, materials and products in a manner that does not require centralization or central curation yet enable unequivocal reference, use of persistent identifiers, and machine-readability and interoperability. To achieve this, COMMS will duplicate, adapt, and improve upon the open infrastructure and mini-ecosystem published by Peters & Crutzen (2024). Specifically, in the COMMS project, we will complement the concept or construct repository (CoRe) created by Peters & Crutzen (2024) with an open interlinking ecosystem of additional dedicated repositories that together cover the most commonly used tools in empirical research and evidence synthesis in the social sciences. We distinguish five types of such tools, each used as a collection of atomic elements. The first type is measurement instruments (as used in quantitative research), consisting of single items (e.g. questions). The second type is evidence synthesis extraction guides (as used in systematic reviews), consisting of single extractable entities (e.g. their identifiers, labels, descriptions, and extraction instructions). The third type is codebooks (as used when coding qualitative data), consisting of individual code specifications (e.g. the description and instructions for a given code). The fourth type is interview guides (as used to elicit qualitative data), consisting of individual eliciters (e.g. open questions). The fifth type is observation guides (as used in observation research), consisting of observables (e.g. the description and instructions for given phenomenon). Each collection-level entry will consist of one or more atomic entities, which can also be stored individually, and receive individual persistent identifiers. Atomic entities can be included in multiple collection entities. By linking to the relevant concept or construct in a CoRe it is clear which atomic entities are intended to be represented by a given atomic entry. A visual representation of this ecosystem is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: A visual representation of the ecosystem that will be developed by COMMS.