[open-science] this "data curation" of which you speak

Wed Apr 4 18:00:55 UTC 2012

Jessy Kate Schingler Wed, 4 Apr 2012 09:48:13 -0700
> having the technical solution [for developing open science] doesn't
> mean we have a cultural solution, and at the moment, IMHO, the main
> challenges for peer review are cultural and procedural. having
> clear, alternative workflows for publication (eg., is it publish -->
> review --> curate? or review --> curate --> publish? etc.),

Just to nail down this term of art: I'm guessing "data curation"
denotes "managing a data collection," no? and "curating open data"
connotes activities like, e.g.,

* securing public availability
** positive: ensuring public access, backup
** negative: preventing unauthorized modification, theft, DoS
* enhancing public access
** providing identifiers (whether, e.g., DOIs or Plain Old URIs)
** submitting to other collections

Or am I very confused? If not, I claim curation of some sort is
required for all but the most trivial and unscalable review:

Consider this narrative: I get a dataset, it looks important, I invest
work in assimilating it, exploring it, and generating visualizations,
I strengthen my hunch. At this point, I seek "review" or "publication"
in at least the minimal sense of saying "hey, look @ this" to peers.
For which I'm gonna wanna

- put the data (et al) somewhere accessible yet safe
- send pointers to peers

Does that not mean, I want some data curation?

Furthermore, suppose that, after that informal process, I and my 
peer consultants agree the dataset and derived products (et al) is
good enough to "get a pub" (whether poster, article, technical report,
whatever). Certainly I would then want the dataset curated, e.g., 
for linking from a paper (at least, as supporting information), no?

Therefore, the flow should be [curate, review, publish], because
curation promotes review. (And IMHO "review," of which "peer-reviewed
publication" as we know it is a ceremonial subset, is that from which
the goodness of scientific openness flows--but that is of course a
much stronger claim.)

FWIW, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>