CRII: HCC: RUI: Transparency and Access Control in Life Science Data Sharing

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Generating and sharing large quantities of data are now a fundamental part of life science research and have taken a key role in such collaborations. This project will contribute a deeper understanding of the challenges of data sharing in life science research, while placing usability at the forefront of design. It will explore new approaches to facilitating data sharing between collaborating life scientists by diving deep into the issues surrounding the challenges associated with access control through ethnographic interviews and by developing new systems that simplify and expedite data sharing. Data sharing is considered one of the biggest challenges faced by life scientists, as different disciplines produce data with different characteristics, methods, and data sharing needs and criteria. Improvements to the data sharing process will aid life scientists in advancing biological and biomedical research, which could dramatically improve the health and well-being of individuals in society.Four key insights regarding current access control systems guide this research: (1) Lack of default or transferable access settings leads to inefficiency. (2) Lack of visible sharing settings can result in accidental data sharing. (3) Inconsistent ownership over files can lead to inaccessible data once researchers leave the collaboration. (4) Data-sharing technologies that are institution agnostic are the most used. The research will clarify such challenges that are associated with access control when sharing data with collaborators, through semi-structured interviews and observation of life scientists when they are sharing data. A software system will be developed and released open-source, that addresses potential usability breakdowns in existing systems and provides features that may be missing from commonly used off-the-shelf products.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.