[open-science] open-science Digest, Vol 22, Issue 3

[Dorothea Salo]

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 7:42 AM, Vision, Todd J <tjv at bio.unc.edu> wrote:
> Some thoughts on what's missing in this policy debate right now:
> http://blog.datadryad.org/2010/07/30/the-us-congress-and-selective-data-blindness/
>
> It's great to see the emphasis on opendata.gov, and around open access publications.  But I am dismayed by the surprisingly tepid stance that US agencies like the Natl Science Foundations are taking regarding the availability of science data collected with public grant dollars:
> http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116928

Think a bit more long-term. The NIH Public Access Policy didn't burst
full-formed from the head of Jove either.

There are serious problems -- social, cultural, and technical -- to be
solved before any kind of open-data mandate. Some are such that open
data is not even an option, e.g. personally-identifiable data in
human-subjects research (the danger of which is raised to a truly
nasty power because of the ease of reidentification via dataset
mashup). Others can be solved in time, e.g. data standards for
disciplines that lack them (namely, MOST). Others will take a lengthy
process of researcher education; I hope you don't think every NSF
grantee understands what they produce by way of data, much less how to
preserve, present, and share them.

Given that, the NSF could only be tepid at this early date. An
out-of-the-blue data mandate would have caused widespread
insurrection; this is a shot over the bow, a signal, a way to boil the
frog. Give them time; they'll turn up the heat.

Dorothea

-- 
Dorothea Salo                dsalo at library.wisc.edu
Research Services Librarian      AIM: mindsatuw
University of Wisconsin
Rm 330B, Memorial Library
(608) 262-5493