What is a data ecosystem?

The way that individuals and organizations have produced and consumed data has changed with the advent of new technologies. As a consequence, data has become a tradable and valuable good. There are now Data Ecosystems, in which a number of actors interact with each other to exchange, produce and consume data. Such ecosystems provide an environment for creating, managing and sustaining data sharing initiatives. Despite Data Ecosystems are gaining importance, until now, there is no common agreement on what theories should look like in Data Ecosystems. The evidence is the lack of a well-accepted definition of the term Data Ecosystem. In order to overcome this gap, in this paper, we investigate some theoretical issues that are relevant for Data Ecosystems. Our main focus is on the aspects related to the components of a Data Ecosystem as well as to propose a common definition for a Data Ecosystem term. Therefore, the aim of our work is two-fold. First, we investigate the state of research on the Data Ecosystem field and related kinds of ecosystems, such as Business and Software Ecosystems to enable the development of a common knowledge base. Second, we extract constructs from relevant studies in order to build a common and cohesive definition for Data Ecosystems.