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Best Practices for User-Centric Data Portals

10 best practices for user-centric data portals

If you are creating your own portal (or even if you want a way to assess a portal or repository you are uploading your datasets to) it's useful to know what is required and expected of such infrastructures.

The following identifies 10 ways open data portals can add value for users:

  • Organising for use of the datasets (rather than simply for publication);

  • Learning from the techniques utilised by commercial data marketplaces; promoting use via the sharing of knowledge, co-opting methods common in the open source software community;

  • Investing in discoverability best practices, borrowing techniques such as recommedation from e-commerce;

  • Publishing good quality metadata, to enhance reuse;

  • Adopting standards to ensure interoperability;

  • Co-locating tools, so that a wider range of users and re-users can be engaged with;

  • Linking datasets to enhance value;

  • Being accessible by offering both options for big data, such as Application Programme Interfaces, and options for more manual processing, such as comma separated value files, thus ensuring a wide range of user needs are met;

  • Co-locating documentation, so that users do not need to be domain experts in order to understand the data;

  • Being measurable, as a way to assess how well they are meeting users' needs.

Read: The Future of Open Data Portals

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