[Turing Data Story] UK PhD thesis metadata analysis

[mhauru]

Story description

The British Library publishes a data set with almost all PhD theses ever written in the UK, called EThOS: https://doi.org/10.23636/ybpt-nh33. It’s got publication year, author name, title, and university/institution for all of them, I think some theses may have some more metadata too. The data goes back more than a hundred years. You can observe some cool trends in academic fields and institutions using it.

I have in the past done an exploratory analysis of the data (http://nbviewer.org/github/mhauru/EThOS-analysis/blob/master/analysis.ipynb). We could base the story on that, but I appreciate that it might be more fun for others to take some fresh angle on the data, and I'm very much open to suggestions there.

Ethical guideline

Ideally a Turing Data Story has these properties and follows the 5 safes framework.

• [ ] The analysis you produce is openly available and reproducible.
• [x] Any data used are open and have an explicit licence, provenance and attribution.
• [ ] Any data used are not personal data (i.e. the data is anonymous or anonymised).
• [ ] Any linkage of datasets in your data story does not lead to an increased risk of the personal identification of individuals.
• [ ] The Story must be truthful and clear about any limitations of analysis (and potential biases in data).
• [ ] The Story will not lead to negative social outcomes, such as (but not limited to) increasing discrimination or injustice.

Current status

• [x] Scoping of the story
• [ ] Write story outline
• [ ] Add material to the story notebook
• [ ] Combine materials into a readable story
• [ ] Proofread
• [ ] Request reviews
• [ ] Address reviews
• [ ] Merge to master branch.

Updates

[KatrionaGoldmann]

Ideas and meeting minutes: https://hackmd.io/wwP0w2sESDisXn2fQmah_Q