[open-archaeology] Ethics, archaeology and open data

Tue May 11 11:50:21 UTC 2010

>From this side of the pond, and my own limited experience with these issues, I would say there are two things worth considering.

The first one is concerned with legal issues regarding copyright. As far as I understood, but this may not be true for other countries, the contractors of archaeological 'heritage management' research can legally claim the right of distribution of data and reports (note that the 'intellectual copyright' always remains with the researcher). They can thereby restrict access to data and reports to trusted parties. In the Netherlands, this has been re-interpreted in 2007 to the degree that reports and data have to be made accessible to registered archaeologists through digital repositories. As far as I can tell, this policy is mostly adhered to in the case of commercial digs, although contractors can still enforce an embargo for a limited period of time. This system can easily be extended to situations where we are dealing with data that will be used for scientific publication, but it can obviously not be forced on amateurs that are not accountable for what they do with their data.

The second thing is the accessibility of government data (open government is the current buzzword). Quite a bit of archaeological data falls into this category, and regardless whether we are afraid of treasure hunters, this has to be made available to the general public in one form or another. A well-known case in the Netherlands is the 'Landmark sentence'; a British company went to court to force the city of Amsterdam to make data on soil contamination available to them for free (http://www.raadvanstate.nl/uitspraken/zoeken_in_uitspraken/zoekresultaat/?verdict_id=35424). They could then resell digests of this to interested customers who wanted to build a house and know whether there were any restrictions on the building site or potential problems in the soil (archaeology clearly falls into the same category). While in this particular case the judgement was that investments made by the city of Amsterdam did not justify the fees they asked, it also means that governments can still ask money for data if they can prove that they have paid themselves for the construction and maintenance of the databases.

So it seems there are quite clear legal precedents that could be used to support the kind of open data approach you are advocating, but I think the financial issue might be more tricky in this respect

Best wishes,

Philip Verhagen

From: open-archaeology-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:open-archaeology-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Anthony Beck
Sent: dinsdag 11 mei 2010 11:58
To: open-archaeology at lists.okfn.org
Subject: [open-archaeology] Ethics, archaeology and open data

Dear All,
I thought it about time to raise the spectre of open approaches and ethics. Of recent I have chatted to a number of people and organisations who want to open up their data. The conversation always comes back to the ethical issues. I'd like us to generate a statement or a set of ethical principles to help move this forward.
Like other disciplines, such as ecology, there are potential ethical issues to making our data open. I personally think the benefits outweigh the costs. However, that is not the point: this is going to be a recurring question and, as a group, we should be able to provide a position statement to provide clarity. I'm sure we can get advice/feedback on such a statement from national heritage agencies (RCHMS etc.), umbrella institutions (ICOMOS etc.), extant repositories (ADS, HEAcademy) and global affiliates (Earthwatch etc.).
Anyway, the position as I see it:

 *   there is an ingrained friction to providing open data
    *   complex underpinning rationale:
       *   contract units (whose data is it anyway?)
       *   national bodies (organisations inertia)
       *   academics (stealing of publication thunder? Does anyone have any documented evidence that this has EVER happened?)
       *   individuals (it's just not something people are used to doing)
 *   Public access is provided to some data (either patchy coverage or generalised)
    *   Regional and national monuments record
    *   Repositories (like the ADS: offering static as opposed to dynamic data holdings)
 *   The really interesting and useful stuff is grey (source data is silo-ed and inaccessible)
The oft touted reason, in the UK at least, is that if access is given to this information then it will be exploited by "night hawkers" (irresponsible metal-detectorists) and other "treasure hunters" and sites (I don't like that word) will be destroyed. This is obviously biased and plays to the lowest common denominator. It does not bring into play any of the benefits that data sharing can provide.
I think the opposite argument is about those archaeologists who have sat on their archive for 10's of years. We know of its significance but it is not available for academic and research analysis and does not inform the planning process. It is in someone's attic waiting to be written up in their dotage. This has enormous impact on local planning policy, public and academic understanding, theory, practice etc. etc. Since PPG16 came in (essentially commercial archaeology) in the UK (early 90s (?)) there has been less of this approach. However, there are a number of locations where these grey records are the most intact heritage statements for substantial areas of the UK.
In my mind those are the polarised worst case ethical scenarios. Somewhere in between lies the path of reason. So basically I'm asking:

 *   Is this the kind of thing we should do?
 *   Who should do it (I'm happy to lead or just to participate: if this floats someone elses boat)?
 *   Do we need legal advice (can OKFN help in this capacity - you do, after all, have some lawyers on board)
 *   Should we align this with other international organisations (I think so: UNESCO, ICOMOS and EAC spring to mind)
Any thoughts?

Ant

As an aside I believe the heritage system, or the UK heritage system at least, has too much of a bias towards the generation of synthetic material: time and money, IMHO, that could be better spent on putting the data in order and making it available. How can we realistically advocate informed regional research agendas (which we do in the UK) when the data to support these agendas is not available or generalised to such an extent that it is not useful?

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