QSA*Net: Promoting Open Research in Qualitative Social Science

Qualitative social science data are increasingly available through repositories that meet FAIR metadata standards. Ireland has been an international leader in developing policies and infrastructure for sharing qualitative social science data. Nevertheless, practices of re-using data remain limited.

This project will research barriers to re-using qualitative data deposited in data infrastructures such as the Digital Repository of Ireland, and inform researchers about the analytical potential of Qualitative Secondary Analysis (QSA). It will engage researchers across disciplines, and across academic and applied sectors, by building community, fostering expertise, and developing skills in QSA, with a particular focus on early career and other under-represented researchers. To meet this overall aim, we plan to conduct a series of focus group interviews with different groups of researchers and stakeholders in Ireland. These include: Early career researchers; Cross-disciplinary researchers; Cross-sectoral researchers; HEI educators; Research funders.

QSA*Net will establish an international partnership on excellence in QSA with Maynooth University and the Technological University of the Shannon in Ireland, and the University of Leeds in the UK. Building on this partnership, QSA*Net will deliver series of training workshops and develop an openly available collection of state-of-the art resources on QSA in the Digital Repository of Ireland (QSA*Hub), and will contribute to the development of an international network on Qualitative Archives and Qualitative Data Re-Use.

Promoting data re-use is critical to embedding a culture of open research within the research lifecycle. The paucity of qualitative data re-use practices across both basic and applied social science research inhibits the full development of an open research culture. This project aims to close this gap and stimulate awareness and participation in open research by promoting practices of data re-use in the qualitative social sciences.