[open-science] Open Science Microformats/Pattern languages? was Re: Launch of the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science + Is It Open Data?

Wed Feb 24 12:12:28 UTC 2010

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 1:42 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>  
wrote:
 >
 >
 > On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 6:18 AM, John Wilbanks
 > <wilbanks at creativecommons.org> wrote:
 >>
 >> We tend to prefer RDFa over microformats, as it is infinitely more
 >> scalable.
 >> Also, I would caution against badging the principles without adding
 >> *legal* information to data. Self-asserting the principles does  
not actually
 >> comply with the principles - only the use of an unambiguous legal  
tool opens
 >> up the principles.
 >
 > I am an advocate of just adding the button. I understand and  
support the
 > work on legal agreements but the scientist must be freed from making
 > decisions about these as far as possible.

Not any more than an artist should be free to just create art or a  
musician to just create music without worrying about the crimes being  
committed because she copied a fragment of music or a few pixels of an  
artwork. The internet changed everything... never before has it been  
possible to commit so many crimes with just a click of a mouse button.  
Everyone, yes, even the scientists, have to now be responsible and  
concerned about the legal ramifications of using and letting others  
use their data.

Think of PP as the guiding principles that lead you to release your  
data as completely open, free of all encumbrances. Think of CC0 (or  
PD) as a mark of quality that tells others that the specific dataset  
they are about to use or copy is indeed free of all encumbrances. And  
that proclamation has to be embedded in the data so that the two, the  
data and its use conditions, travel together. Embedding the metadata  
in RDFa converges toward a standard, allowing us to leverage other  
technologies and communities.

Finally, I don't want to download data based on a principle, then  
realize that I have to go to another web page which tells me what I  
can or cannot do with that data (remember, just recently you were  
depending on an existing web page working because you had to give a  
demonstration, but it was hiccuping? embedding the metadata in the  
data ensures fewer moving parts, hence fewer points of failure).

In an age where we routinely do unnecessarily complicated things,  
nothing could be simpler than adding a CC0 waiver and a button to our  
data. There is no decision-making. The decision has already been made  
because you, I and others agreed to the Panton Principles.

 > I  (or my colleagues - human and
 > otherwise) have created about 150,000 buttons:
 >
 > http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/crystaleye/
 >
 > and it would be worse if we we hadn't. That data is "Open Data". It  
points
 > to the OKD page and if Rufus/John want to refine what is on that  
page,
 > great. It's a meta statement.
 >
 > There's a greater danger that I blow myself up in the laboratory  
than that
 > the "Open Data" button misfires. I'll worry about the former.
 >
 > P.
 >

-- 
Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org
Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org
Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org
Science Commons Fellow, http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/kishor
Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu
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