Servicing New and Novel Forms of Data: Opportunities for Social Science

For social and economic researchers, many useful but previously unavailable sources of data have become at least potentially accessible in recent years. These ‘new and novel’ forms of data (NNfD), such as social media data or smart meter data, represent potentially invaluable resources for researchers, but pose challenges for access provision and analysis. This short article introduces Data Service as a Platform (DSaaP), a project currently underway at the UK Data Service to establish a technological infrastructure supporting data archivists and social and economic researchers in managing and analysing both familiar and new and novel forms of data. It presents an overview of NNfD in social science contexts, introduces the DSaaP system, and sketches short examples of DSaaP capabilities in analysing NNfD, drawn from an associated UKDS project Smarter Household Energy Data: infrastructure for policy and planning, before concluding with some reflections on the potential value added to social scientific research by Data Service as a Platform.