Medical Data Literacy Education System in Reproducibility Crisis

Abstract

[Purpose/Significance] The biomedical research field is suffering from reproducibility crisis, which has become one of important issues under the background of the rise of the data-intensive research paradigm. As one of the most important attributes of scientific research by empirical data study,reproducibility needs to be improved by good data practices of researchers. How to effectively improve the data literacy of researchers has become the key point to solve the crisis. However, the relevant research is basically in the blank condition. The paper aims to establish a new data literacy education system for reproducibility crisis, in order to fill the current research gap and provide reference for implementing the relevant education in our country. [Method/Process] Firstly, the paper clarifies the relationship between reproducibility crisis and data literacy by using content analysis: the inappropriate data behavior of researchers may bring serious problems in many respects, such as research data, methods, process, environments and results, which could eventually lead to the irreproducible research. Then, we redefine the concept of data literacy education. Secondly, based on the summarization of the existing foreign research results and practice, the paper builds the Reproducibility Data Literacy Education (Re-DLE) system from the perspective of educational goals and content, subjects and objects, teaching methods, implementation strategies, and evaluation. At last, it proposes the necessary guarantee factors for the operation of the system. [Results/Conclusions] The ultimate goal of Re-DLE is to improve research reproducibility, bulid the educational content framework on the theory of data life cycle, and divide the main content into three dimensions: re-data awareness, re-data skills, and re-data ethics, each of which includes some clear educational objectives, subject modules and detailed instructions Medical libraries have a wealth of teaching experience and should become the educational main body for the broader biomedical research community. the establishment of diversified training methods, diversified teaching strategies and evaluation methods, in other words, we need to strengthen the team building of teaching librarians, consolidate the educational resources foundation, promote educational exchanges, and improve the internal and external cooperative system, so as to push forward the building of the Re-DLE system. The research results of this paper not only can be seen as a theoretical breakthrough, but also provide the theory basis for the development and implementation of education. In addition, due to the limitation of methods, the paper can be used as a qualitative research, which still has some problems to be solved. In the future work, we need to build more scientific and effective Re-DLE system by using empirical research methods.

Keywords

• data literacy education|data management|reproducibility|medical informatics|medical library