DESCRIPTION

Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI) is a means of augmenting a publication with a 'digital exoskeleton' (Kapiszewski & Karcher, 2021, 474-6) of annotations that provide additional information about the evidence on which statements in the publication are based. Annotations are linked to particular statements or passages, and signalled by a highlight which prompts the interested reader to click and expand the annotation, and where it is available, directly access the supporting data.

ATI builds on an earlier technology, Active Citation, a process via which 'any citation in a scholarly paper, article, or book chapter that supports a contestable empirical claim is hyperlinked to an excerpt from the original source and an annotation explaining how that excerpt supports the empirical claim, located in a "transparency appendix" attached to the document' (Moravcsik, 2014, 48). Active Citation itself emerged from the DA-RT (Data Access and Research Transparency) movement in political science, which sought to develop and codify best practice to ensure transparency across a range of methodological approaches within the discipline. Developed in partnership with Syracuse University's Qualitative Data Repository (QDR), Active Citation had a number of limitations including a reliance on custom software and online appendices for data sharing, which led QDR to seek a new approach 'that could make use of existing open-source technologies [...] and create a more robust link between active citations and their underlying data.' (Karcher & Weber, 2019, n.p.). Established and piloted through a partnership between QDR, Cambridge University Press and the open source annotation platform Hypothes.is, this new approach was ATI.

How does ATI work? As Karcher and Weber (2019, n.p) note, 'authors can generate ATI annotations using their own choice from familiar tools including comments or cross-references in Word or LibreOffice, comments in Acrobat, hyperrefs in LaTeX, etc'. The hypothes.is open web annotation mechanism enables readers to access and interact with annotations in both pdf and online versions of the article. As clarified in the QDR's guidance on ATI, annotations can be used to address one or more of a number of different functions:

A full citation to the underlying data source(s) mentioned in the annotated portion of the text [...];

A source excerpt: typically 100 to 150 words from a textual source [...];

A source excerpt translation: if the excerpt is not in English, a translation and indication of its source;

An analytic note: discussion that illustrates how the data were generated and/or analyzed and how they support the empirical claim or conclusion being annotated in the text;

Data source: the file name(s) of the corresponding data source(s) linked to the source(s) themselves when these are digital and can be shared ethically and legally.

(Qualitative Data Repository, n.d., n.p.)

ATI in this way offers a flexible and versatile means of augmenting the text of a publication in ways that accommodate differing methodological specificities. In instances where it is not possible for ethical or legal reasons to link to passages of the underlying data, annotations could be used to enhance methodological transparency by further clarifying the methods or analytical processes used. The annotated article itself is also supplemented by a data overview, which accompanies any stored data itself together with the compiled annotations in the QDR repository. In the data overview, authors can further contextualise the data as well as clarifying the 'logic of annotation' they have applied - i.e. the purposes for which annotation has been used (Elman & Kapiszewski, 2018, 3; Karcher & Weber, 2019, n.p.).

Researcher Lindsay Mayka, who used ATI for a project on the human-rights framing of militarized urban-security interventions in Bogotá, identified four main benefits. ATI enabled Mayka to provide richer descriptions of the political context her work addressed, created more opportunities for her to incorporate participants' own words, enabled smooth linking to multimedia and social media sources, and made it possible to engage with sources that stood in contradiction to the main argument, allowing the heterogeneity of the evidence to be more visible (Mayka, 2021). Several scholars have likewise highlighted the ways ATI allows the inclusion of 'evidentiary underpinnings' (Jacobs et al., 2022, 218) that would otherwise be difficult to reconcile with restrictive journal word limits, while others have suggested that the process prompted a greater degree of care and self–examination in their use of source material and formulation of arguments (Milonopoulos, 2021, 484; Siewert, 2021, 489).

Challenges associated with the use of ATI include the additional time and effort it requires (Kapiszewski & Karcher, 2019, 476; Gerring, 2021, 499). Additional challenges include the need to address journal editors' and peer reviewers' lack of familiarity with the technology (Myrick, 2021, 495), and the fact that, as Karcher and Weber note, the process is currently only enabled by a small number of publishers (2019, n.p.). Broader questions have also been raised by qualitative researchers sceptical of the wider DA-RT initiative in political science, with critics positioning additional transparency mechanisms as an unnecessary addition to existing forms of openness in qualitative research (Cramer, 2018, 10-12) or as incongruent with the objects and processes of knowledge in the discipline (Isaac, 2015, 274, 275-6).

References

Cramer, R. (2018). 'Trust, Transparency, and Process', Qualitative & Multi-Method Research, 16(2), 10–13. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3524289

Elman C, and Kapiszewski D. (2018). 'The Qualitative Data Repository's Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI) Initiative', PS: Political Science & Politics, 51(1), 3-6. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517001755

Gerring, J. (2021) 'Annotations to ATI', PS: Political Science & Politics, 54(3), 496–499. https://doi.org/10.1017/S104909652100024X

Isaac, J.C. (2015). 'For a More Public Political Science', Perspectives on Politics, 13(2), 269–283. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592715000031

Jacobs, A.M., Kapiszewski, D. and Karcher, S. (2022). 'Using Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI) to Teach Qualitative Research Methods', PS: Political Science & Politics, 55(1), 216–220. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096521001335

Kapiszewski, D., and Karcher, S. (2021). 'Empowering Transparency: Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI)', PS: Political Science & Politics, 54.3, 473–78. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096521000287

Kapiszewski, D., and Karcher, S. (2019). 'Transparency in Practice in Qualitative Research.' PS: Political Science & Politics, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2019-if2he-v2

Karcher, S. and Weber, N. (2019). 'Annotation for Transparent Inquiry: Transparent Data and Analysis for Qualitative Research', IASSIST Quarterly, 43(2), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.29173/iq959

Mayka, L. (2021). 'Bridging Positivist and Interpretative Approaches through Annotation for Transparent Inquiry', PS: Political Science & Politics, 54(3), 479–482. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096521000184

Milonopoulos, T. (2021). 'Annotating Without Anxiety: Achieving Adaptability, Accessibility, and Accountability Through ATI', PS: Political Science & Politics, 54(3), 483–486. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096521000172

Moravcsik, A. (2014). 'Transparency: The Revolution in Qualitative Research'. PS: Political Science & Politics, 47(1), 48–53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096513001789

Myrick, R. (2021). 'Reflections on Using Annotation for Transparent Inquiry in Mixed-Methods Research', PS: Political Science & Politics, 54.3, 492–95. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096521000214

Qualitative Data Repository. 'Generating an Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI) Project'. Webpage. https://qdr.syr.edu/ati/ati-instructions [accessed 14/08/25]

Siewert, M.B. (2021). 'How Annotation for Transparent Inquiry Can Enhance Research Transparency in Qualitative Comparative Analysis', PS: Political Science & Politics, 54.3, 487–91. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096521000597