[open-science] (Lack of) data sharing for fossil data

Fri Apr 15 13:28:16 UTC 2011

Ross and others on this thread,

Keep in mind that successful open data schemes for the geosciences  
will depend on open standards for web service interfaces and encodings  
as well as open metadata standards. See, for example, how the  
international OneGeology (http://www.onegeology.org/) project has used  
OGC interface and encoding standards and ISO metadata standards.

Ocean observation, meteorology and hydrology stakeholders with  
interests like yours have created domain working groups (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/wg 
) in the OGC to focus their efforts to create international consensus- 
derived profiles of standards relevant to their activities. The  
meteorology and oceanography working group brought their pre-existing  
netCDF standard into the consortium to harmonize it with OGC standards  
and make it an OGC-maintained standard.

What's missing are some key standards for web services that will  
support access policy decisions (not a simple matter, as those damned  
mercenary fossil hunters illustrate!), and best practices that will  
make implementations of those standards useful to practitioners. See  
the work of the GeoRM and Security domain working groups at the link  
above.

Lance

Lance McKee
Senior Staff Writer
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
+1 508-752-0108
lmckee at opengeospatial.org

http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact

On Apr 15, 2011, at 8:54 AM, Ross Mounce wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've been quietly lurking on this list for a few weeks now. Seems  
> like an excuse to say "hi"
>
> The motivator for the Nature piece was a long thread on the PaleoNet  
> mailing list discussing an Open Letter http://supportpalaeodataarchiving.co.uk 
>  I co-organised to demonstrate support from *within* the paleo- 
> community for better data archiving. Ewen picked up the story from  
> there and decided to spin a story out of it - great! You might be  
> interested to know that we drafted and organised the Open Letter on  
> an EtherPad - an idea I entirely 'stole' from OKFN pads i'd seen ;)
>
> I'm particularly pissed off that when data is published [sic] in  
> supplementary materials it's regularly corrupt / unusable /  
> obfuscated / near useless... etc and one has to then run the  
> gauntlet of contacting the original authors, which I hope we all  
> know has decidedly mixed success rates (e.g. Wicherts et al, 2006),  
> not to mention the additional hassle for both parties.
>
> This is what I'm aiming to change in particular - the way in which  
> underlying data that supports a research article is made available,  
> in the systematics [~phylogenetics] and palaeontological communities.
> My first attempt at pitching this idea to the systematics community  
> was very well received:
> http://prezi.com/1s0lkatmc30t/the-continued-growth-of-phylogenetic-information/
> However it was given at a small conference (Young Systematists'  
> Forum) so it hasn't had anything like the impact of the paleo- 
> focused Open Letter.
>
> The Open Dino project people are awesome, and there are actually  
> many many, other people as I've recently discovered, in the paleo- 
> community that want more Openness of research data.
>
> Just one further note - I'm going to be at the Linked Open Data EBI  
> short-course in May soon.
> http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Rebholz-srv/semantics_WS_May2011.html
> Do let me know if you're around then in the evening - I would really  
> like to integrate / meet a bit more of the open science community,  
> and I know a fair few of you are Cambridge-based... just a thought ;)
>
>
> *waves hello*
>
> Ross
>
> -- 
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
> Ross Mounce
> PhD Student
> Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
> University of Bath
> 4 South Building, Lab 1.07
> http://twitter.com/rmounce
> http://bath.academia.edu/RossMounce
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 12:00 PM, <open-science- 
> request at lists.okfn.org> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. (Lack of) data sharing for fossil data (Rufus Pollock)
>   2. Re: (Lack of) data sharing for fossil data (Matt Jones)
>   3. Re: (Lack of) data sharing for fossil data
>      (cameron.neylon at stfc.ac.uk)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:23:23 +0100
> From: Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
> Subject: [open-science] (Lack of) data sharing for fossil data
> To: open-science <open-science at lists.okfn.org>
> Message-ID: <BANLkTikHbWx9VsBg7SWq+qAqrECHKUcm7Q at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Interesting article on data sharing in Palaeontology:
> <http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110411/full/472150a.html>
>
> Made me think of the excellent Open Dinosaur project:
>
> <http://ckan.net/package/open-dino>
> <http://opendino.wordpress.com/>
>
> Rufus
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:59:37 -0800
> From: Matt Jones <jones at nceas.ucsb.edu>
> Subject: Re: [open-science] (Lack of) data sharing for fossil data
> To: rufus.pollock at okfn.org
> Cc: open-science <open-science at lists.okfn.org>
> Message-ID: <BANLkTin3eHQv2vtqx1HPx92EJfqJ46+qvw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Definitely interesting.  The article also didn't mention PaleoDB (
> http://paleodb.org/), one of the main international data sharing  
> efforts in
> paleontology, crossing all taxa, with replica sites in Australia,  
> Germany,
> and two sites in the US.  Its a voluntary effort, so differs  
> somewhat from
> the journal mandated sharing described in the article, but still I  
> would
> think it deserved a mention.  Its quite a bit more targeted than  
> MorphBank
> for this topical area.
>
> Do you know if the Open Dinosaur project is contributing their  
> specimen
> measurements to the broader PaleoDB?
>
> Getting these types of data repository systems to interoperate,  
> expose data
> to each other, and be able to provide persistence and replication  
> services
> to each other are some of the goals of the DataONE federation (see
> http://dataone.org).  Dryad, mentioned in the article, is one of the
> founding nodes in DataONE. If DataONE is successful, when  
> researchers choose
> to use one repository for their data, they won't be contributing to  
> a single
> repository, but rather to a federation that allows data to persist  
> beyond
> the lifetime of the individual repository project they choose.   
> Seems pretty
> compatible with OKFN goals to me.
>
> Matt
>
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 6:23 AM, Rufus Pollock  
> <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>wrote:
>
> > Interesting article on data sharing in Palaeontology:
> > <http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110411/full/472150a.html>
> >
> > Made me think of the excellent Open Dinosaur project:
> >
> > <http://ckan.net/package/open-dino>
> > <http://opendino.wordpress.com/>
> >
> > Rufus
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > open-science mailing list
> > open-science at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
> >
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 07:39:48 +0000
> From: <cameron.neylon at stfc.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [open-science] (Lack of) data sharing for fossil data
> To: <jones at nceas.ucsb.edu>
> Cc: open-science at lists.okfn.org
> Message-ID: <484DF39D-994A-428E-AC85-EFFE4EE6E914 at stfc.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> I've had a couple of chats to Ross Mounce who was the instigator of  
> the open letter that tipped off this article. He's aware of (and  
> involved with) Dryad UK and I also pointed him in the general  
> direction of OKFN. Given his main focus at the moment was data to do  
> with published articles Dryad (and DataONE) seem like a good place  
> to start for him. His main task really is getting a bit more  
> community backing behind the idea that _something_ needs to be done  
> and he seems to be doing a good job on that.
>
> Cheers
>
> Cameron
>
>
> On 14 Apr 2011, at 20:59, Matt Jones wrote:
>
> > Definitely interesting.  The article also didn't mention PaleoDB (http://paleodb.org/ 
> ), one of the main international data sharing efforts in  
> paleontology, crossing all taxa, with replica sites in Australia,  
> Germany, and two sites in the US.  Its a voluntary effort, so  
> differs somewhat from the journal mandated sharing described in the  
> article, but still I would think it deserved a mention.  Its quite a  
> bit more targeted than MorphBank for this topical area.
> >
> > Do you know if the Open Dinosaur project is contributing their  
> specimen measurements to the broader PaleoDB?
> >
> > Getting these types of data repository systems to interoperate,  
> expose data to each other, and be able to provide persistence and  
> replication services to each other are some of the goals of the  
> DataONE federation (see http://dataone.org).  Dryad, mentioned in  
> the article, is one of the founding nodes in DataONE. If DataONE is  
> successful, when researchers choose to use one repository for their  
> data, they won't be contributing to a single repository, but rather  
> to a federation that allows data to persist beyond the lifetime of  
> the individual repository project they choose.  Seems pretty  
> compatible with OKFN goals to me.
> >
> > Matt
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 6:23 AM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org 
> > wrote:
> > Interesting article on data sharing in Palaeontology:
> > <http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110411/full/472150a.html>
> >
> > Made me think of the excellent Open Dinosaur project:
> >
> > <http://ckan.net/package/open-dino>
> > <http://opendino.wordpress.com/>
> >
> > Rufus
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > open-science mailing list
> > open-science at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > open-science mailing list
> > open-science at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
>
> --
> Scanned by iCritical.
>
>
>
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