We hope that these papers will encourage the take up of robust data citation and scholars can see the great value in publishing qualitative data to increase transparency in the reporting of their findings. With readers now able to return directly to quoted extracts of data, situated in content within their ‘mother’ interview, we hope to encourage asia rcs data more good scholarly practice in both publishing and citing data.
Four: unlocking data locked up in software
I return to the still challenging issue of how to archive qualitative data in a non-proprietary and sustainable format that becomes ‘locked up’ in a bespoke commercial package during data analysis. Back in the early days of Qualidata we were offered data in proprietary format, like NUDIST, Atlas-ti and WinMax. Even now the new incarnations of these market-leading softwares use proprietary data formats; and they largely don’t talk to each other. With some new kids on the block and greater recognition of open source/open formats, new opportunities for us as data curators have arisen. The new generation of students all take for granted the use of computational software to handle data, and with the days of scissors and paper long gone for qualitative data analysis, getting value-added data in and out of multiple softwares is even more crucial.