Introduction: Timescapes Archive Methods Guide Series 2021

Since the Timescapes Programme: Changing Lives and Times which produced the Timescapes Archive, there has been a global proliferation of infrastructures and resources for the archiving and sharing of qualitative data.  These repositories have become more complex in both intention and functionality in response to the increasingly diverse range and formats of academic data generated.  Correspondingly, too, there has been rapid innovation in methods of reusing these qualitative data as well as challenges for their reuse.

The purpose of this new Timescapes Archive Methods Guide series is to provide a publication format for short pieces which focus on specific challenges, innovations, and questions raised by archives and their reuse. This includes questions about how and whether archiving datasets might shape their content, how new data legislation and developments in principles of research integrity may change how we reuse data, but also innovations in new and creative methods, ethics or approaches for qualitative data reuse. Additionally, reflecting the changes in the Archive, we would welcome Guides considering teaching using the Archive, and perhaps the challenges of writing archiving into your funding applications.

This new series therefore builds on the original 20 Timescapes Methods Guides, but widens the focus to capture debate beyond the reuse of qualitative longitudinal data, and to provide a forum in which to discuss archiving and data reuse more generally.

Submission Guidelines:

If you have an idea for a Guide, please email Dr Kahryn Hughes, k.a.hughes@leeds.ac.uk or Dr Anna Tarrant, atarrant@lincoln.ac.uk with a brief outline.

Guides should be no longer than 2,000 words.

Your Guide will be reviewed by the series editors, and in addition to online publication will receive a DOI through the White Rose Repository at the University of Leeds.