Collaborative Data Services: The Case of Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI)

Providing effective data services often requires collaboration between different organizations with differing goals and cultures. This presentation provides a narrative account of the development of Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI), a collaboration between the Qualitative Data Repository (QDR), a domain repository; Cambridge University Press (the Press); and Hypothesis, an open source software nonprofit. ATI uses open web annotations (using Hypothesis software) to annotate academic work (published by the Press or other publishers), to data sources (curated and archived by QDR). By collaborating, the three organizations were able to draw on each others' strengths. For example, by using open-source, open-standard software, QDR was able to steer away from some of the problems that previous in-house tool development posed. These and other synergies illustrate the enormous benefits offered by such collaboration. However, collaborating with diverse partners also poses significant challenges. For example, partners viewed ATI with different levels of priority within their larger operations, were interested in the project for distinct reasons, and on differing timetables. The presentation concludes by discussing which components made the collaboration ultimately successful and lessons for similar endeavors