[open-science] Open Science/Open Data at Science Conferences

Mon Aug 22 09:09:53 UTC 2011

I gave a couple of papers at conferences last year - EASST (European Association for the Study of Science and Technology - they had a strand on public engagement with engineering) and PCST 2010 (Public Communication of Science and Technology). Both were concerned with open science as a medium for public engagement with science. The papers are in my university (UWE, Bristol) repository or on my home page.

Best wishes

Ann

Ann Grand
ann2.grand at uwe.ac.uk
www.scu.uwe.ac.uk/index.php?q=node/181

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Open Science/Open Data at Science Conferences (Ross Mounce)

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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:32:57 +0100
From: Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [open-science] Open Science/Open Data at Science
	Conferences
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I'm giving a purely Open Data talk at the British Ecological Society annual meeting next month actually...

http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/meetings/current_future_meetings/2011_annual_meeting/other_events.php#online

I've been invited for a little symposium entitled 'Publishing Science in the online age'
It will hopefully be trackable on Twitter too, Sep 13th, using the hashtag #BESdigital

here's a rough draft of my 10min talk so far...

Title: On the importance of 'Open Science' and 'Open Data'

Abstract: The Internet offers us an unprecedented opportunity to disseminate research in all its forms, far and wide for ease of accessibility, transparency, innovation, synthesis, education and outreach. We could and *should* do more to take advantage of this invaluable tool. One particular aspect that I campaign about, is the digital and Open availability of research data. Arguably, in many cases the underlying data is a more important and long-lasting contribution than the research paper itself, yet it is common practice in scholarly communications to only provide a paper with a mere description of the data and analysis. We have the tools to move beyond this bare minimum, and journals are slowly adopting them, but not nearly as much as they should. So with this talk, I shall state the case for 'Open Data'
principles, with real examples of why accessibility and transparency is vitally important for maximally efficient research, and how it can benefit us all.

Needless to say I haven't done the slides yet.
I was thinking of reppin' Panton Principles, the OKF, Dryad, Figshare, "It's The Data" [1] "Linking Big" [2], DataCite (and the principles of data citation), and current issues with citations e.g.
"Fame, Glory & Neglect in Meta-Analyses" [3,4,5]

That's probably a bit ambitious for 10mins but we'll see how it goes.
Suggestions for additions and/or ecology-specific additions are welcome!
I notice the 5 BES run journals are 'Dryad partners' but between them have only submitted 1 dataset from 2009(!) to the Dryad repo! Perhaps some influence could help persuade BES to become *active* Dryad partners?

Finally, to provide some further comment on the general issue of presenting on Open Data at Science conferences...

I'd love to do Open Data / Open Science advocacy talks at every Science meeting I go to - a lot people just aren't aware of the issues and I feel these talks could potentially be very valuable to change and influence mindsets.
BUT I feel I can't for a couple of reasons. 1.) Is the classic "I don't have the time/energy". For some conferences, I'd feel very lucky if I even got one talk accepted (my main research stuff). To ask for two separate talks would be almost unthinkable, and I kinda have to put my research first atm (but I can sneak in a few advocacy slides at the end of my talk if the conference isn't too serious, as I did at ProgPal 2011: http://www.slideshare.net/rossmounce/progpal2011)

that reason probably isn't that novel or unexpected... but the next might be a bit more interesting
2.) In my experience, if you DO give a serious, well-researched, quantitated, subject-tailored, Open Data advocacy talk - people don't view it as research; they see it as pure politics and it rules you ineligible for talk prizes!
I'm particularly thinking of my Young Systematists' Forum Dec 1st 2010
talk: http://prezi.com/1s0lkatmc30t/the-continued-growth-of-phylogenetic-information/
The judges really liked it, thought it was a great talk, but it was 'unscorable' in their words. Having to stick to the set criteria on their marking schemes, I apparently disqualified myself from the student's competition!
The gist of it is; I have a horrible feeling that *some* people view anything even mildly political as NOT Scientific, even if it's hugely evidenced-based, and this is a significant problem to overcome.

Regards,

Ross

References:

[1] Botstein, D. It's the data! Mol. Biol. Cell 21, 4-6 (2010). URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1091/mbc.E09-07-0575.
[2] Sidlauskas, B. et al. Linking big: The continuing promise of evolutionary synthesis. Evolution 64, 871-880 (2010). URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00892.x.
[3] Kueffer, C. et al. Fame, glory and neglect in meta-analyses.
Trends in Ecology & Evolution (2011). URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.07.007.
[4] Piwowar, H.
http://researchremix.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/indexing-citations/
[5] Seeber, F. Citations in supplementary information are invisible.
Nature 451, 887 (2008). URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/451887d.

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Ross Mounce
PhD Student
Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group University of Bath
4 South Building, Lab 1.07
http://bath.academia.edu/RossMounce
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

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