 The relational view of data encourages attention to the history of data, highlighting their continual evolution and sometimes radical alteration, and the impact of this feature on the power of data to confirm or refute hypotheses. It explains the critical importance of documenting data management and transformation processes, especially with big data that transit far and wide over digital channels and are grouped and interpreted in different ways and formats. It also explains the increasing recognition of the expertise of those who produce, curate, and analyse data as indispensable to the effective interpretation of big data within and beyond the sciences; and the inextricable link between social and ethical concerns around the potential impact of data sharing and scientific concerns around the quality, validity, and security of data (boyd &amp; Crawford 2012; Tempini &amp; Leonelli, 2018).