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

[Rishab Ghosh]

dear all,

belated apologies for not making the call. i was in the middle of
intercontinental travel and couldn't find an appropriate timezone!
however, i will try to add some inputs to the document, and look
forward to meeting many of you in december.

best,
rishab

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 3:56 AM, Velichka Dimitrova
<velichka.dimitrova at okfn.org> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Please find the notes from the second Advisory Panel call yesterday. The
> editable version of this document 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, 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 or e-mail Velichka and ask to forward.
>
> Meeting Notes
>
> Key points:
>
> Obstacles
> Effective data sharing where data cannot be open
> Incentives of different groups
> 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 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,
> 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
> 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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