[open-science] open-science Digest, Vol 17, Issue 7

Wed Mar 24 14:36:22 UTC 2010

John's comments are important and point up a fundamental issue respecting
making disclosed
data *effective* / *useful.*  Data placed on an electronic billboard next to
the Santa Monica Freeway
are openly available but are virtually useless except by a series of
cumbersome machinations...*
*
At a time when government agencies in the US are being pushed to disclose
data it is essential
that we develop guidelines and standards for making disclosed data directly
useful -- not just "informative"...

The IPCC situation ("Climate-gate") has made all the more clear why the
precise lineages and provenance of data
-- the record of scientific work flow, transformations, combinations and
recombinations -- must be readily available for
review and assessment...

Tom

Tom Moritz
1968 1/2 South Shenandoah Street,
Los Angeles, California 90034
USA
+1 310 963 0199 (cell)
tommoritz (Skype)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/tmoritz

“Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει” (Everything flows, nothing stands still.)
--Heraclitus

Please consider the environment before printing this email.

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 6:19 AM, John Wilbanks <wilbanks at creativecommons.org
> wrote:

> I sent a version of this to Daniel privately, but he noted that perhaps it
> might have gone to the list as well. It ties into Cameron's point about
> avoiding this question entirely in the PP, but also into the importance of
> understanding what "open data" actually means.
>
> Remember that "open" in the sense of the SC protocol, the OKF definition
> and the panton principles is about the *intellectual property* rights
> associated with data - copyrights, database rights - and *contractual
> property* rights associated with data products. Open doesn't mean it's free
> of constraints like privacy, and it also doesn't mean the data are actually
> *useful* - curated, annotated, explained.
>
> Privacy rights are vastly complex and cannot be waived with public licenses
> like intellectual property rights. there is a complex process known as
> "informed consent" that must be achieved before privacy rights can be
> legally waived, and that consent must be vetted through a process approved
> by an institution's IRB (institutional review board). The IRB terms govern
> the movement of data, under application by researchers.
>
> Thus, data can indeed be "open" under the PP but not made available to the
> world, as the PP only touch on the IP aspects of data. Privacy rights create
> a major driver for using the public domain on data actually, as the
>  prevalence of privacy rights on vast swaths of science data - be clinical
> health data or social science research - renders those data incompatible
> with "viral" sharing regimes on data, as many viral regimes disallow the
> addition of content that cannot itself be made viral.
>
> When the data is in the PD, it can flow into a clinical or social science
> database, and then be redistributed under the terms that the IRB set forward
> for the original data, as redistribution of data is invaluable in these
> fields, albeit under much tighter restrictions than we associate with "open"
> science.
>
> We're working on standardizing IRB agreements right now at Creative
> Commons, based on our years of experience with the huntingtons, parkinsons,
> alzheimers, and other rare disease communities that deal with privacy issues
> in the clinical space. these are in many ways the easy ones, because the
> diseases involved make informed consent easier to get. informed consent for
> healthy control subjects is going to be the harder problem. and in social
> science the issues may be irresolvable - deidentification is so easy these
> days, and getting easier.
>
> We're also working on standards for publishing data sets in a format that
> is actively "re-useful" and will be publishing a set of recommendations
> tomorrow in conjunction with the PLoS Forum that encode the PP as the legal
> part of a multivariate problem of making online data actively reusable.
>
> I would prefer the FAQs not overstate the power of "open" from an IP
> perspective. Data that is online but burdened with privacy, or with poor
> curation and annotation, lacking persistent URIs, and so forth - that data
> meets the principles, but is likely to be of little use to a working
> scientist. We run the risk of overheated expectations if we simply say "raw
> data now" - the reality is far more complex, and we're not all Tim BL ):-)
>
> jtw
>
>
>
> On 3/23/10 2:35 AM, Cameron Neylon wrote:
>
>> The original idea behind the Panton Principles was that we sidestep this
>> issue. The key point being that where there are privacy issues (or other
>> issues) you simply do not choose to publish the data. The PP are not, at
>> least as far as the bullet points are concerned, to dictate when, how, or
>> if
>> data are published.
>>
>> The PP are intended to be applied after the decision has been taken to
>> publish the data. And by "publish" we meant to be extremely general -
>> hence
>> the addition I made the other day to the FAQ. I think it is important to
>> be
>> clear on this point because the term "publish" often means something very
>> different to different people. And for many researchers it explicitly
>> doesn't include "make available on the web".
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Cameron
>>
>>
>> On 23/03/2010 13:26, "daniel.mietchen at googlemail.com"
>> <daniel.mietchen at googlemail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>  Dear Iain,
>>>
>>
>> on the first point, what do you think of the current
>>
>>> phrasing
>>>
>> "Respecting the privacy of research subjects should be an
>>
>>> integral
>>>
>> part of the decision whether to make the data Open."?
>>
>>
>>
>>> With kind regards,
>>>
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>>
>>
>>  On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Iain
>>> Hrynaszkiewicz
>>>
>> <Iain.Hrynaszkiewicz at biomedcentral.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>>
>>> Writing from a publisher that is keen to make data available, I'd like
>>> to
>>> point out two sets of guidance relevant to some matters arising from
>>> the
>>> pirate pad discussions on the Panton Principles.
>>>
>>> Firstly, the issue of
>>> protecting privacy in human subject research. This
>>> is a major barrier to the
>>> sharing of clinical information and I wonder
>>> if it is being glossed over in
>>> the FAQ (13). Some practical guidance on
>>> openly sharing clinical data was
>>> published in the BMJ earlier this year,
>>> for example:
>>>
>>> http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/340/jan28_1/c181
>>>
>>> Secondly, applying PP
>>> prior to publication. At BioMed Central, for
>>> example, we encourage openly
>>> sharing data before formal publication [in
>>> a peer-reviewed journal] and
>>> encourage editors to not preclude open
>>> projects from publication.
>>>
>>> http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/duplicatepublication
>>> So perhaps PP
>>> should be applied more uniformly, without the need to
>>> clarify what
>>> 'publication' is.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Iain
>>>
>>>
>>> Iain Hrynaszkiewicz
>>>
>>> Managing Editor
>>> BioMed Central
>>> Floor 6, 236 Gray's Inn Road
>>> London, WC1X
>>> 8HL
>>> T: +44 (0)20 3192 2175
>>> F: +44 (0)20 3192 2011
>>> W:
>>> www.biomedcentral.com/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From:
>>> open-science-bounces at lists.okfn.org
>>>
>>> [mailto:open-science-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of
>>>
>>> open-science-request at lists.okfn.org
>>> Sent: 18 March 2010 12:00
>>> To:
>>> open-science at lists.okfn.org
>>> Subject: open-science Digest, Vol 17, Issue
>>> 7
>>>
>>> Send open-science mailing list submissions to
>>>
>>>  open-science at lists.okfn.org
>>>
>>> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World
>>> Wide Web, visit
>>>        http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
>>>
>>> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>>>
>>>  open-science-request at lists.okfn.org
>>>
>>> You can reach the person managing the
>>> list at
>>>        open-science-owner at lists.okfn.org
>>>
>>> When replying, please
>>> edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>>> than "Re: Contents of
>>> open-science digest..."
>>>
>>>
>>> Today's Topics:
>>>
>>>   1. FAQs for the Panton
>>> Principles and Open Data (Peter Murray-Rust)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:43:47 +0000
>>> From: Peter Murray-Rust
>>> <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
>>> Subject: [open-science] FAQs for the Panton Principles and
>>> Open Data
>>> To: open-science<open-science at lists.okfn.org>
>>> Message-ID:
>>>
>>>    <67fd68331003170943h3ab178d5y64f9086c3af5c597 at mail.gmail.com>
>>>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>>
>>> We are talking to a variety
>>> of editors and publishers who are keen to
>>> make
>>> data "open available" and
>>> in many cases mandate it as part of the
>>> scientific
>>> process. It's clear
>>> that although PP are (I hope) fairly
>>> self-explanatory
>>> the implications
>>> (licences, buttons, "public domain", community norms,
>>> etc.)
>>> are unclear
>>> and need careful explanation. One way to do this is through
>>> FAQs
>>> and we
>>> (Rufus, Cameron, Jonathan + me) are asking for the help of the
>>> OpenScience
>>> list to provide useful communal answers. I'll post the FAQs
>>> -
>>> feel welcome
>>> to add to them but not TOO many - and ask you to create
>>> answers. There is a
>>> pirate pad at:
>>>
>>> http://piratepad.net/LgLRcGLw35
>>>
>>> Please use to edit,
>>> discuss, hack etc.
>>>
>>> We will appreciate rapid feedback as we hope to promote
>>> this to
>>> attendees at
>>> the AmerChemicalSoc (ACS) next week.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Peter Murray-Rust
>>> Reader in Molecular Informatics
>>> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of
>>> Chemistry
>>> University of Cambridge
>>> CB2 1EW, UK
>>> +44-1223-763069
>>>
>>> -------------- next part --------------
>>> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>>>
>>> URL:
>>>
>>> <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/attachments/20100317/a4e49
>>>
>>> f69/attachment-0001.htm>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> open-science mailing list
>>>
>>> open-science at lists.okfn.org
>>>
>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
>>>
>>>
>>> End of open-science
>>> Digest, Vol 17, Issue 7
>>> *******************************************
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 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
>>
>> _____________________________
>>
>>> __________________
>>>
>> open-science mailing
>>
>>> list
>>>
>> open-science at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-s
>>
>>> cience
>>>
>>
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> open-science mailing list
> open-science at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/attachments/20100324/d6e14c10/attachment-0001.html>