[open-science] Launch of the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science + Is It Open Data?

Tue Feb 23 20:12:39 UTC 2010

Apologies for the belated reply. Some thoughts:

As someone passionate about this but new to the community and its inner
workings, only after reading John's post about why this is significant did I
really get a better sense of, well why this is significant. I appreciate now
that the two big players in this space are essentially agreeing to some
common ground, which is necessary for moving forward. Hooray!

As a scientists, if I work with a data set, I'll look at this and say,
great, yes, I agree-- and then move on. The real question is how to make
this actionable. For example, can we provide a microformat of some kind for
data sets? Something that includes a wrapper for links to data with license
info? But then that separates the license info from the data, which is
suboptimal. That said, software licenses are simply distributed "with"
software, and not necessarily "inside" it. So, perhaps that's acceptable.

Could something like a code snippet/microformat use a webhook (web callback)
that calls back to a site such as CKAN or infochimps and registers it in
their database? This would not prevent scientists from hosting their data
wherever else they want, but would provide a similar function to
arxiv.org(and an equally important mirroring function, which I
assume/gather CKAN
already does?). And one could say that regardless of where else it is
hosted, if it's in these data registries, then that suffices to meet the
criteria. This would also make it super easy for scientists to participate.

I'm sure there's many other, probably better, ways to do it, this is just
one thought. And of course we need the concrete ideas before implementation
of those ideas can occur, so definitely agreed this is a great start! Thanks
for humouring the n00b, and apologies if this has all been covered before.

Are there interests/plans for going further into the "operationalization"
realm?
Jessy

On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Daniel Mietchen <
daniel.mietchen at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Thank you, Peter and Cameron. Next step then would be some framework
> for when and if data should be made available.
> Anyone working on this?
> Daniel
>
> On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 4:22 PM, Cameron Neylon
> <cameron.neylon at stfc.ac.uk> wrote:
> > I would add slightly to this. The point of the PP was for it to apply
> after
> > the decision to publish the data has been made. We completely sidestep
> the
> > issue of when it should be published. As Peter says, privacy is an issue
> > with the decision to publish, not any decision about how that data is
> made
> > available. Note that the PP makes no comment at all as to when, or even
> if,
> > data should be published.
> >
> > The issue of the definition of data is a fair one, but it is essentially
> > impossible to define in a way that will capture all the different
> > definitions that people want. We can count angels till the cows come
> home,
> > or we could rely on legal definitions (which would be inconsistent). I’m
> > pretty happy with “I know it when I see it”. This is not supposed to be a
> > legal code, this is supposed to be statement of principle.
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Cameron
> >
> >
> >
> > On 20/02/2010 12:15, "Peter Murray-Rust" <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Daniel,
> > This is an extremely valid point. My understanding is that it best
> covered
> > by "community norms". At present I see the situation as:
> > * any data which is "Open Data" is necessarily publicly visible so there
> is
> > no additional release of information.
> > * it is therefore important for an author to unedrstand the community
> norms
> > relating to the release of this information
> > * data in public view are tecnically crawable and analysable by bots. It
> is
> > true that some bot-owners may be dissauaded by the current lack of
> clarity
> > on rights and hold back from indexing this. However it is likley that
> this
> > is already repeatedly crawled by large search engines (some of which
> > currently crawl private information as well).
> >
> > So I don't see that Open Data per se gives any less privacy. Of course if
> a
> > community or author applies Open Data to material that is normally
> regarded
> > as private this is a problem. But that breach of privacy is not really
> > dependent on Open Data - but a poorly thought out publication policy.
> >
> > On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Daniel Mietchen
> > <daniel.mietchen at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > After posting on the principles in some mailing lists, I got replies
> > from the social sciences/ humanities/ medical corner in which concerns
> > were raised about the lack of definition of "data" in the principles,
> > and about a possible lack of applicability to their fields,
> > essentially because of privacy concerns for subjects/ patients.
> > Perhaps you can address these points when you talk about the subject?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Daniel
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 11:59 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
> wrote:
> >> I've now met Lisa - we've had lunch with Lee (also copied). The good
> news
> >> is
> >> that there will probably be 2 recordings of this - one routed through MS
> >> and
> >> UWash and the other an independent video stream by an enthusiast (whose
> >> name
> >> I'll post when I have it). I think this is a seminal meeting from which
> >> both
> >> SC and OKF take considerable credit and I'm hoping we can get it widely
> >> reported ...  I bounced this off Lisa at lunch. Anyone with friendly
> >> science
> >> journalists is welcome to let them know.
> >>
> >> Cameron and I will divvy up the Panton material - I will also show
> >> IsItOpen
> >> but don't have time to make any requests during the talk. However I had
> >> earlier tried it out on a friendly publisher and got a positive reply.
> >>
> >> There'll be a good physical attendence. I haven't asked but I assume it
> >> will
> >> be tweeted
> >>
> >> P.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Peter Murray-Rust
> >> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> >> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> >> University of Cambridge
> >> CB2 1EW, UK
> >> +44-1223-763069
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> open-science mailing list
> >> open-science at lists.okfn.org
> >> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://www.google.com/profiles/daniel.mietchen
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Scanned by iCritical.
> >
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.google.com/profiles/daniel.mietchen
>
> _______________________________________________
> open-science mailing list
> open-science at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
>

-- 
Jessy Cowan-Sharp
p: http://jessykate.com
w: http://nebula.nasa.gov
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/attachments/20100223/72b55389/attachment-0001.html>