The promises of research data sharing in anthropology are many: adding dimensionality to
analysis of data through collaboration; re-interpretation and re-use of data; enhancing
capacity to foreground evidence and intellectual genealogies behind claims; improving and
extending use of research resources; complying with new laws and the mandates of funding
agencies. There are also many challenges: protecting the privacy of research subjects; figuring
out how archiving and sharing data can benefit research subjects; working out ways to give
credit to data producers; refining ethical expectations between collaborating researchers;
managing the labor and time it takes to ready data for sharing; building and funding technical
infrastructure (including metadata standards); figuring out how to comply with relevant laws.
This workshop will explore both the promises and challenges of research data sharing, and
what has been learned building the Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography
(PECE), an open source virtual research environment freely available as a Drupal distro on
GitHub.