Big data, little data, no data

"Big data" is on the covers of Science, Nature, the Economist, and Wired magazines, on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. But despite the media hyperbole, as Christine Borgman points out in this examination of data and scholarly research, having the right data is usually better than having more data; little data can be just as valuable as big data. In many cases, there are no data - because relevant data don't exist, cannot be found, or are not available. Moreoever, data sharing is difficult, incentives to do so are minimal, and data practices vary widely…