ICIJ Launches Redesigned Datashare,Empowering investigative Journalism and Data Analysis
WASHINGTON – The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) today released a major redesign of Datashare,its open-source research tool,aiming to substantially enhance its power and accessibility for journalists,researchers,and data analysts worldwide. The updated platform promises a more intuitive user experience and a robust suite of new features designed to streamline investigations involving large volumes of documents.
Originally developed to support ICIJ’s groundbreaking investigations like the Pandora Papers, Datashare allows users to securely upload, search, and analyze complex datasets.The redesign builds on this foundation with features currently in growth including an advanced search form eliminating the need for complex search operators, a split-screen view for PDFs displaying extracted text alongside the original document, and the ability to share saved searches with colleagues.
Further planned enhancements include speech-to-text functionality for audio and video files, improved structured content extraction preserving original document layouts, a re-extraction option for scanned documents with imperfect text recognition, customizable search alerts, and adjustable highlighting options for search terms within documents.”We want to help users get the best from their files in as many use cases as possible,” ICIJ stated. The institution actively solicits feedback through its public Github project backlog (https://github.com/orgs/ICIJ/projects) and a user survey on structured content (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeThKmdrCUigCUnDMpWonG-KV-twAresdKZvd4uEgOFNKJfEg/viewform?usp=sharing).
Datashare is available for free download at http://datashare.icij.org for local use. A server version is also available for collaborative online work (https://icij.gitbook.io/datashare/server-mode/about-the-server-mode). Older versions remain accessible on the same website. Users are encouraged to submit feedback and suggestions to datashare@icij.org.
