  Purpose: Data discovery practices currently tend to be studied from the
perspective of researchers or the perspective of support specialists. This
separation is problematic, as it becomes easy for support specialists to build
infrastructures and services based on perceptions of researchers' practices,
rather than the practices themselves. This paper brings together and analyzes
both perspectives to support the building of effective infrastructures and
services for data discovery. Methods: This is a meta-synthesis of work the
authors have conducted over the last six years investigating the data discovery
practices of researchers from different disciplines, with a focus on the social
sciences, and support specialists. We bring together and re-analyze data
collected from in-depth interview studies with 6 support specialists in the
field of social science in Germany, with 21 social scientists in Singapore, an
interview with 10 researchers and 3 support specialists from multiple
disciplines, a global survey with 1630 researchers and 47 support specialists
from multiple disciplines, an observational study with 12 researchers from the
field of social science and a use case analysis of 25 support specialists from
multiple disciplines. Results: We found that there are many similarities in
what researchers and support specialists want and think about data discovery,
both in social sciences and in other disciplines. There are, however, some
differences which we have identified, most notably the interconnection of data
discovery with web search, literature search and social networks. Conclusion:
We conclude by proposing recommendations for how different types of support
work can address these points of difference to better support researchers' data
discovery practices.
