[open-science] Making science more accountable and efficient

Sun Feb 13 14:17:36 UTC 2011

Lance McKee mentioned something about a month ago that seems close to what
you're talking about:

for an image, see
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/attachments/20110112/988b8c83/attachment-0001.png

for more info, see
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/2011-January/000613.html

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Sören Auer
<auer at informatik.uni-leipzig.de>wrote:

> Dear Cameron, others,
>
> Thanks for your comments so far.
>
>  There have been a lot of efforts along these lines. Many have come
>> from different angles but the idea of "levels" of certification for
>> openness has been a common theme. There is a message inherent in the
>> fact that there have been a bunch of efforts and most of us have
>> never heard of them.
>>
>
> Can you give me some pointers to these related initiatives?
>
>  The message is that this is hard because you're trying to tackle a
>> bunch of things at the same time. First get some agreement on what
>> standards of openess are.
>>
>
> I think for software (Open Source), creative works (CC) and data (Open
> Data) we have these standards already, what other scientific artifacts are
> there? Maybe models (like UML models, ontologies, taxonomies, experimental
> architecture models) - I guess one of the other categories might fit for
> them too, e.g. ontologies/taxonomies could be considered as Open Data or
> creative works in terms of CC.
>
> Also, openness (as I said in my initial email) is not the most important
> issue here - if an artifact is not open for good reasons, but it is at least
> made available to the scientific community and public for peer-review
> evaluation purposes, this is already a big step forward to what we have now.
>
>  Second problem is that you need to go from zero adoption to wide
>> adoption before you can have an effect.
>>
>
> I think you have already an effect if one conference or journal requires
> authors to classify their work according to the suggested criteria. All
> authors submitting to this journal or conference will have to think about it
> and since the rule applies to all submission to this particular science
> outlets its also fair. In fact if we would manage to get a few good science
> outlets in a certain field on board this could be the start of a paradigm
> shift in that field.
>
>  My suggestion would be that it is easier and probably more effective
>> to bite of small chunks of the problem.
>> This is what we tried to do with the Panton principles, and various
>> people are looking at generalising them beyond data (not without some
>> disagreement).
>>
>
> I think this fragmentation actually is counter productive. Ideally this
> would be tackled with one set of principles and/or manifesto and I would be
> more than happy if my ideas, for example, could be integrated into the
> Panton principles (although I doubt this would be possible, since it would
> require quite some substantial changes).
>
>  As John pointed out Victoria Stodden has essentially described what
>> the gold standard should be.
>>
>
> I think making openness the gold standard and requiring scientists to
> release their data under CC0 can not be a model for science in general.
> There are many cases where its actually acceptable that data, software etc.
> to be released under different terms and this should not be neglected.
> However, the terms should be made explicit and there should be always a
> publicly available version for peer-review and evaluation purposes. At least
> for computer science, I think this would in the end indirectly dramatically
> facilitate openness, currently I have the impression many computer science
> researchers "hide" their artifacts more because their implementations are
> not robust and usable enough than because they are against openness. If
> there is preassure (from journals and conferences) to make it publicly
> available, they have to improve usability and robustness anyway and then
> they will also make it available in truly open ways.
>
> Sören
>
>
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