[open-science] OKF: What shall I say at the Open Science Summit in Berkeley

[Michael Nielsen]

On Wed, 7 Jul 2010, Cameron Neylon wrote:

> Of course, as you point out, most projects have no technical return path 
> at all and that is something that is measurable. What sort of standards 
> and expectations would be appropriate to build in there? What is 
> appropriate for different kinds of projects (with different issues 
> around privacy/security/time availability?). Is there a minimal 
> standard?

In many, perhaps most cases a cleaned up version of my question is, I 
think, clear enough: does the project (1) offer substantive ways for 
non-professionals to contribute to the science, and also (2) encourage 
that involvement?

For most scientific projects the answer is a clear "no".  For arXiv the 
answer is also "no".  For Galaxy Zoo etc the answer is a clear "yes". I'd 
be interested if anyone knows offhand what the policies for deposition are 
at places like GenBank.  I wouldn't be surprised if the big databases are 
all over the place on this issue, with the answer often being that (1) is 
possible in principle, but that the answer to part (2) is "no".  So they 
don't satisfy the criterion.

I'm not sure I see the relevance of privacy / security / time availability 
on this particular question.  Of course, I agree that such issues exist 
and are important, e.g., privacy issues at a site like PatientsLikeMe. 
But they seem orthogonal to the issue of whether there's a serious two-way 
engagement going on with amateurs having the opportunity to make a 
substantive contribution.

Michael