University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Towards more transparent, reproducible, and reusable data cleaning with OpenRefine

Li, Lan; Ludäscher, Bertram; Zhang, Qian

Content Files
LL-Zhang-Poster.pdf

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/103330

Description

Title
Towards more transparent, reproducible, and reusable data cleaning with OpenRefine
Author(s)
  • Li, Lan
  • Ludäscher, Bertram
  • Zhang, Qian
Issue Date
2019-03-15
Keyword(s)
  • OpenRefine
  • Data cleaning
  • Provenance
  • Transparency
  • Reproducibility
  • Reusability
Date of Ingest
2019-03-22T21:34:43Z
Abstract
We study provenance features of OpenRefine, a popular data cleaning tool. In OpenRefine, provenance is available through operation histories and recipes. The former provide users with an undo/redo capability; the latter represent histories in JSON, so recipes can be reused. The model implicit in histories and recipes exhibits both prospective and retrospective provenance features, but is incomplete in at least two ways: (i) functions resulting in mass edits, and (ii) single cell edits are not captured, thus missing important prospective and retrospective provenance information, respectively. We propose to complete the missing information by capturing names and parameters of user-invoked functions, and by exposing retrospective provenance hidden in internal project files. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated with an early prototype.
Publisher
iSchools
Series/Report Name or Number
iConference 2019 Proceedings
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
Conference Poster
Language
eng
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/103330
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21900/iconf.2019.103330
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2019 Lan Li, Bertram Ludäscher, and Qian Zhang

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iConference 2019 Poster Descriptions PRIMARY