Project Description
The project “Building a Community of Practice for Open Naturally Occurring Data” aims to support the establishment of a community of practice comprised of research support staff and qualitative researchers who work with naturally occurring data. The project has received funding from the NWO between April 2024 – March 2025.
​Naturally occurring data are considered “high value” due to the costs and time saved in their collection, as well as their potential for (re-)analysis and (re-)use. Simultaneously, the act of “opening up” naturally occurring data presents several challenges – including the well-known clash between data privacy and data openness —which currently restricts their widespread sharing and reuse.
​
To date, there are several initiatives that aim to build infrastructure and develop good practices for sharing naturally occurring data. Building on these initiatives, this project has had two aims. First, we have developed an online hub where all these initiatives and the resources they produce can be easily accessed by researchers and research support staff.
Second, given that the ethical, legal, and technological landscape of data sharing is continuously evolving, we have created capacity through training and community-building for researchers and research support staff to tackle future challenges to naturally occurring data sharing.​​​​​
Naturally occurring data
Are audio, video, and digital records of real-life interactions that take place in everyday life such as medical consultations, calls to helplines, and social media posts. They are widely used by qualitative researchers across a range of disciplines such as communication science, linguistics, psychology, and sociology because of the valuable insight they provide into real-world phenomena, behaviours, and interactions.
Mission statement
The Community of Practice for Opening Naturally Occurring Data is a diverse and collaborative group of research support professionals and researchers who work with naturally occurring data. We are united by our ethos to facilitate and promote responsible and sustainable sharing and reuse of naturally occurring data. We work together to explore, develop, and implement best practices for making naturally occurring data as “open” as possible while ensuring ethical and responsible use.
​
The community bridges the gap between researchers and research support professionals in order to develop guidance and tools, as well as share experiences and expertise regarding sharing and reuse of naturally occurring data. Through regular meetings, discussions, a members’ forum, and joint projects, we foster a collaborative environment where members share knowledge, exchange best practices, and develop new approaches to responsible naturally occurring data sharing and reuse.
​
Beyond our internal collaboration, we actively engage with the wider research community through our website and through events such as workshops and presentations that we are organising.
Meet our Team
.jpg)
Founding members
Amy van der Heijden
As assistant professor Nutrition and Health at the Department of Health Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, I am interested in the development of food preferences in everyday life, with the ultimate aim to enhance healthy and sustainable eating behaviours. My research interest includes how health, taste and sustainability are negotiated in everyday talk-in-interaction. For this purpose, I use naturally occurring real-life talk as empirical data. These data are very rich, but also sensitive and confidential. Discussing how this relates to the principles of Open Science, within the COP4ONOD, might enhance the usability of the data as well as the quality of scientific work.
.jpg)
Andrew Hoffman
Hi! My name is Andrew Hoffman, and I work as a Service Scientist - Research Data Management work in the Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences (FSW) at Leiden University – namely, in Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology (CADS) and at the Centre for Science & Technology Studies (CWTS). My hybrid role combines Data Stewardship and Senior Researcher functions, the aim of which is a ‘learning system’ for RDM – i.e., to develop and carry out research on RDM/Open Science-related topics (e.g., policies, practices, and infrastructure) that is informed by the questions and obstacles my colleague and I encounter in providing hands-on support to researchers; and where the insights gleaned from this research can be applied to the improvement of the RDM/Open Science support we offer. Given the prevalence of ‘naturally occurring data’ in the social and behavioural sciences, and the current lacunae in terms of good practices and fit-for-purpose infrastructure for handling and sharing (open) naturally occurring data, I’m excited to contribute to and learn from COP4ONOD in pushing further these agendas!
Annette Langedijk
I work as research partnership lead for the social sciences and humanities at SURF, the IT cooperative of education and research. This means that, together with SURF colleagues, I try to tackle challenges faced by researchers. For example, think of a service to be able to do research with copyright-protected- or privacy-sensitive data.
For more information:
.jpg)
Emily Barabas
Emily Barabas is a research data steward and privacy advisor for researchers in the social sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. As a data steward, Emily seeks to promote the FAIR principles within the faculty and helps researchers apply these principles to their research data. As a privacy advisor, she helps researchers manage personal data in a manner that is consistent with data protection law. In playing these two roles, Emily is familiar with the opportunities and challenges of implementing open science goals in projects involving privacy-sensitive data. While her work is not exclusively focused on naturally occurring data, Emily is excited to contribute to this community of practice and looks forward to applying outputs of the group to her daily work.
.jpg)
Elisa Rodenburg
About me: I am a Data Steward in the University Library of VU Amsterdam. As a data steward, I support researchers with various questions and issues around Research Data Management and Open Science and I am always keen to learn more about current best practices in those fields. I am looking forward to learning more from the other members of the Community of Practice and hope to be able to spread that knowledge to other researchers and research support staff.
Eline Wagelaar
I am a lecturer of Language and Communication at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I use conversation analysis to take a detailed look at interactions in the setting of health care and education. I also conduct interviews or focus groups in the health care setting to gain more insights into the needs or ideas of participants, for example regarding communication about mental health support.
.jpg)
Florentine Sterk
Florentine Sterk is assistant professor at the Language and Communication group at VU Amsterdam. Her research focusses on forms of expert to non-expert communication, such as science communication, science journalism, and health communication. These forms of communication require recontextualization and reformulation of expert discourse to make information accessible to a non-expert audience. Florentine’s research interest lies with how these processes are reflected in discourse.
Guusje Jol
My name is Guusje Jol and I am a researcher of language in institutional settings, which I
study from a conversation analytic perspective. I am interested in naturally occurring interaction, especially in sensitive settings such as courtroom interaction and HPV vaccination consultation. I hold degrees in both criminal law and Dutch Language and
Culture, and received a PhD (cum laude) in 2020 for my dissertation about police interviews with child witnesses. I work at the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences.
My interest in open naturally occurring data follows from my academic work. On one hand, I highly value necessary protection of people who are involved in research, particularly when researching sensitive topics. On the other, I see it as an ethical duty to reuse research data if possible. This applies especially to recorded and transcribed naturally occurring interactions,
given: (1) the effort and time that it takes to ethically obtain such data, (2) the public funds spend on obtaining the data, (3) the potential burden on participants when collecting new data, (4) recorded interactional data are nearly always suited for more analysis.
Therefore, via COP 4 ONOD I hope to assist research communities in finding ways open up research data for reuse in responsible ways.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Hannah DeLacey
My name is Hannah and I am the faculty data steward of Leiden Law School and I am also a member of the ethics committee. Alongside work, I am a PhD candidate in the field of Law & Society.
Jannine van de Maat
Dr. Jannine van de Maat is Coordinator Data at the Methodology department of the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP). She is also a privacy officer and chairwoman of SCP's works council. Her background is in Political Science and Methodology, and she is currently involved in issues regarding research data, privacy, data collection, questionnaire development and open science.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Jing-Yi Magraw
Jing-Yi Magraw is currently a Research Ethics Faciliator at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In her role, she supports several ethics committees with the ethics review process, as well as assisting in developing guidelines and information for researchers related to research ethics and the review process. Her interest in open naturally occurring data stems not only from her role supporting the ethics committees (which review applications involving a wide variety of data collection forms) but also from her desire to ensure that there is ongoing reflection regarding how to navigate working with the human participants and their data. Through her involvement in COP 4 ONOD, she hopes to not only learn more about the experiences of researchers working with naturally occurring data, but also to stimulate ethical reflection on the process of collecting and analysing it.
.jpg)
Lieve van Hengel
Lieve van Hengel is a PhD student in the Language and Communication group at the VU. In a project on child vaccination in Dutch vulnerable areas, she combines conversation analysis and citizen science. She analyses naturally occurring interactions on child vaccination with parents in neighbourhoods with lower vaccination rates in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. She supports the establishment of a Community of Practice in which key community members and professionals can (informally) share knowledge about conversations on child vaccination.
Lena Karvovskaya
I am a linguist with a broad interest in science and digital technologies. My ultimate goal is to support researchers by assisting them on their way to transparent and reproducible research. Currently, I am the community coordinator for the Dutch Thematic Digital Competence Centre for the Natural and Engineering Sciences (TDCC-NES).
I am excited to be part of the Community of Practice for Open Naturally Occurring Data because I strongly believe in the community's power to facilitate knowledge sharing and bring information to where it's needed. COP4ONOD is an important step for sharing naturally occurring data, and qualitative data in general. While working at VU Amsterdam, I was involved in Bogdana Huma's project, which aimed to collect naturally occurring data in the area of Open Science.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Maartje Roodzant
In 2024, I finished my Master’s degree in Communication and Information Studies (track: Dialogue, Health and Society) at VU Amsterdam. Following this Master’s program, on September 1, 2024, I started as a PhD-candidate at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen on a project funded by the Dr Anna Terruwestichting. In her memorable career as a psychiatrist, Dr Terruwe developed the theory of affirmation (bevestigingsleer), in which she states that affirmation is an essential principle in treatment. She firmly believed that genuine, deeply human encounters are the only way for a person to develop into a human being with a healthy sense of self-esteem. This philosophy of Dr Terruwe applies not only to the discipline of psychiatry, but can be extended to almost any field. I use conversation analysis to explore how affirmation is effectively communicated through talk-in-interaction, both in on- and offline settings. I am supervised by Prof. Wyke Stommel (RU) and Dr Bogdana Huma (VU). As a part of my PhD-trajectory, I am connected to various research- and thematic groups, including LANSI (RU), Taal en Gezondheid (VIOT), Tech at Work (RU), and COP 4 ONOD.
.jpg)
Myrte Gosen
Myrte Gosen is an Assistant professor at the Center for Language and
Cognition (CLCG), Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen. She teaches
in the BA- and MA-programmes of Dutch Language and Culture and
Communication and Information Studies. She has a particular interest in
classroom interactions and she uses conversation analysis to identify
the fundamental structures and practices in interaction that are related
to knowledge construction and development. She has published
international journal articles and book chapters on communicative
practices in education and disseminates her research via presentations,
workshops and professional publications. She is part of the Centre of
Expertise Interactions in Diverse Classrooms, uniting researchers and
educational partners in the Northern part of The Netherlands. In her own
work and in collaboration with these and other partners, the sharing of
naturally occurring data is a recurrent theme. Especially with the
involvement of minors in the data, the ethical considerations and
anonymization of the data plays a major role. Up until now, it seems
easier not to share data, which is of course a very missed opportunity
in terms of research. Being part of this community makes it possible to
explore possibilities together and to share expertise amongst the
different members.
.jpg)
Richard Grimes
I studied for my PhD in solar physics at Aberystwyth University, where I worked primarily on developing software for space weather research. I developed an interest in data curation and management, eventually leading me to my role as Data Steward at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science at TU Delft.
Sven Schaepkens
My name is Dr. Sven Schaepkens, and I am project leader for research at the
Erasmus MC, GP specialty department, team MERGE. For my empirical (interaction)
research, I collect and analyze naturally occurring data from medical education
contexts, such as video recordings of group reflection sessions. I am also a
committee member for the ethical review board of the Dutch Society for Medical
Education (NVMO), and an action editor for Teaching and Learning in Medicine,
Philosophy in Medical Education. From the perspectives of researcher, editor, and
committee member, I am interested in open science, its ethics and its best practices
regarding naturally occurring data.
![].jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/2093d5_7439271276f34c99a2de6a19d210958f~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_0,y_0,w_410,h_421/fill/w_303,h_311,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/%5D.jpg)