[Wg-economics-advisory] Notes from the 2nd Advisory Panel call

Fri Oct 12 10:56:55 UTC 2012

*

Dear all,

Please find the notes from the second Advisory Panel call yesterday. The
editable version of this
document<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YcrplMETDz5g8TCAxySSRJaEzlRym7thmH2Mk-4tkuU/edit#>is
also available, where you can add comments and suggestions or
references
that we have missed:

When and where

   - Thursday, October 11 at 5pm BST / 6pm CEST / 12pm EDT / 9am PDT
   - Call details below
   - Length: max 1h and will aim to be shorter
   - Apologies: Josh, Shane, Tim, Lionel

Present

   - Eric von Hippel - MIT Sloan, Open and distributed
   - Bronwyn Hall - Berkeley and Maastricht, data for economists
   - John Rust - Georgetown - econjobmarket.org
   - Christian Zimmermann - Fed Reserve St Louis - RePEc and FRED economic
   database
   - Eustaquio Reis, IPEA, Rio de Janeiro, open data for economists and
   historians, Ipeadata.gov.br and Memoria.org.br,
   - David Newbery, economist, electricity policy and thus relevant data,-
   Imperial College, and University of Cambridge
   - Hans-Peter Brunner - Asian Development Bank
   - Albert Bravo-Biosca, Nesta, innovation programmes
   - Daniel Goroff, Alfred P. Sloan
   - Sibo Lu, Alfred P. Sloan

Agenda

   - The First Open Economics Workshop in Cambridge UK, December 17-18
      - List of confirmed
participants<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AogGMvffTHrgdGtKcXctUUNQdVNBSTdnU1JxRmkzMHc>,
      you are welcome to make more suggestions about potential invitees
      - http://openeconomics.net/workshop-dec-2012/
      - Call for general participation
      http://openeconomics.net/2012/09/17/open_economics_workshop/
   - Topics for the Working Group to focus on
   - The next workshop or conference for Open Economics in spring 2013 in
   Cambridge MA, US
   - Projects and people to invite and get in touch with (e.g.
   contributioneconomy.net or similar projects)
   - Principles of open data in economics: on data release and licensing
   e.g. from science http://pantonprinciples.org/
   - Survey of available data: dividing by government and non-government
      - Government (census)
      - Private
      - Semi-private

We shared the list with confirmed participants for the workshop and asked
for suggestions about people we should be inviting to attend the workshops.
AP members are also encouraged to send the general call for participation
to their faculties and PhD students.

AP members are invited to make announcements about their work to the Open
Economics public mailing
list<http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-economics> or
e-mail Velichka and ask to forward.
Meeting NotesKey points:

   1. Obstacles
   2. Effective data sharing where data cannot be open
   3. Incentives of different groups
   4. Citizen Digital Economics (Citizen Cyber-Economics)

Current obstacles include:

   - Data providers and researchers who publish their data get a lot of
   questions related to the data (e.g. related to using different software)
      - Projects like Run My Code <http://www.runmycode.org/> present some
      interesting development and highlight that not just data, but
researchers’
      code is equally important for replicability. (Note that Victoria
      Stodden would be attending the December workshop)
   - Maintaining open datasets can require substantial resource
   - Issues of credit - citing data effectively
      - Work is being done here. For example DataCite is an initiative
      allowing for a more effective search, access and use of economic
data (Note
      that Timo Borst would be attending the December workshop)
      - In addition there is the example of the German Data Forum: going
      through PDFs to work out the datasets used (though this remains
challenging)
   - All this said, at least one participant said that authors are
   increasingly ready to provide their data and that datasets are often highly
   used (judging from download numbers)
      - It is important to always include metadata, as one needs more than
      just an excel spreadsheet. This is particularly important in the social
      sciences.
   - There has been some progress in science: what are the lessons we learn
   from other disciplines?
   - Computational resources are available for the institutions, remote
   database access

Effective data sharing where data cannot be open:

   - The data of some published research is confidential
      - Initiative by IZA in Bonn, allowing for queries of datasets which
      are confidential (Note that Nikos Askitas would be attending the
      December workshop)
      - Software adding noise to statistical databases

   - Businesses often do not trust researchers not to distribute the
   confidential information. Having proven secure ways to guarantee data is
   kept confidential are important.
   - There is lack of standardization of principles and standards for
   non-disclosure agreements of journals. Better standardization would enable
   easier reuse even if data is not open.

Citizens Digital / Cyber- Economics:

We asked what were people’s experiences with citizens’ cyber science (when
volunteer citizen scientist collects or processes information as a part of
scientific enquiry) in economics? Could this be a way to involve people
from outside the field?

   - Citizen cyberscience could be a way for generating data and for
   education on economics
   - Volunteer crowdsourcing has been implemented by international
   institutions e.g. price information the World Bank (using mobile phones)
   - User-friendly tools could be provided for citizens’ participation
   - Participation in such volunteer initiatives is often non-random, e.g.
   high-income people should be paid more to participate in a surveys than
   lower-income people
   - There are interesting initiatives like identifying corporations e.g.
   through barcodes for corporate identities (Chris Taggart and Open
   Corporates <http://opencorporates.com/>,
ORGPedia<http://dotank.nyls.edu/orgpedia/>
   )

Other suggestions and remarks:

   - An initiative of the Working Group could be also to implement a survey
   about open data in economics: journal policies on publishing data and
   material sharing
   - Principles in Open Economics: this would be one of the goals of the
   December workshop. There will be another call prior to the conference to
   initiate the discussion and draft ideas.

During the call we invited AP members to make suggestions about people and
institutions to contact. Some of the names mentioned include: Preston
Mcafee, Hal Varian, Susan Athey, Jean Roth (has been invited already),
Provost at Georgetown (ICPSR), IQSS at Harvard - principles for journals …,
Matthew Harding - Stanford,

German Data Forum, Ian Leslie, Cambridge (on personal data handling), Dr.
Simon Lin (Academia Sinica Grid Computing Center in Taipei)

Link to notes and ideas by David
Newbery<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vu5xCKAHkH9l9AqCOrEXDJ-QZS5nmcXX6-NroN82y5o/edit#>
AP members: if you have any more ideas, things we missed in the notes or
anything else, please add it here:
*

We look forward to feedback.

Thank you all for making the time to attend this call and contribute to the
discussion.

-- 
Velichka Dimitrova
Coordinator of the Open Economics Working Group
Open Knowledge Foundation
http://okfn.org | http://openeconomics.net
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