[Wg-economics-advisory] An amendment to the Principles from Bronwyn Hall

Wed Jul 24 14:42:08 UTC 2013

Dear all,

I would like to forward an amendment from Bronwyn on the Principles to the
statement:

"making access to the original data available to others who can ensure
appropriate protections. " (in point 2)

Since the data user of confidential or proprietary data does not control
the data, and cannot make access available, this has been changed to:

"facilitating access if the owner of the original data grants other
researchers permission to use the data"

See below also the email from Bronwyn and should have gone through to the
mailing list.

*

Velichka Dimitrova

Open Economics Project Coordinator |
@vndimitrova<http://twitter.com/vndimitrova>

The Open Knowledge Foundation

Empowering through Open Knowledge
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*

*Open Economics | http://openeconomics.net/ |
@okfnecon<http://twitter.com/okfnecon>|best practice for open economic
data
*

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bronwyn H. Hall <bhhall at berkeley.edu>
Date: 30 June 2013 19:16
Subject: Re: [Wg-economics-advisory] Meeting notes from Advisory Panel
conference calls
To: Velichka Dimitrova <velichka.dimitrova at okfn.org>,
wg-economics-advisory at lists.okfn.org

 Dear all,

I am sorry I was unable to participate in the recent conference calls.
Apparently I did not have the right software, and as I was about to leave
Berkeley for 2 months of travel (Europe and US ocnferences) I did not have
time to fix my computer.

I thought it might be useful for me to reflect on my experience with making
data public, so I wrote the attached which describes the experience with
some data I have used in recent papers, all the way from public (patent
data) to almost completely locked up (UK ONS), in light of the goal of
making at least the final data public. The attached document does that -
it's most useful function may be to generate a taxonomy of data types with
examples.

I hope this is useful.

Bronwyn

At 03:12 PM 6/10/2013 -0400, Velichka Dimitrova wrote:

Dear all,

We held two conference calls with the Advisory Panel last week and had a
lot of great comments and contributions and a strong support for
Principles. Please find some summary notes from the calls last week below
and also in this Google
Document<https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/document/d/1PIFQ8KxWqRNCDiNPGfWC1vOZ1ZkvdTVZf06ZuVOF7ew/edit#>,
which allows for additional comments and feedback. Let us know if you have
any additional thoughts.

*Developing the culture and practice of data sharing*

   - In some communities there is already awareness about the issues of
   data availability and reproducibility: there is a need to present solutions
   and tools. In others there is still need to raise awareness about potential
   benefits of open data in economics.
   - Collaboration between different actors involved is essential: e.g.
   librarians and research data curators are stepping in and contributing to
   the development of bridges between communities.
   - There is a “quasi-effective” way of making researchers publish their
   data at the point of publishing in a journal. Learnt societies like AEA are
   at the forefront of putting in place data availability policies. Funder
   policies sometimes follow suit after journals establish access to data
   requirements.

*Costs and benefits*

   - There is a need to be more explicit about the costs and benefits,
   where preparing data in a useful format requires a lot of time and
   resources and trade-offs exist. We should have proper use cases of where
   sharing data has been beneficial for others.
   - While the hosting and distribution may have lower costs e.g.
   distribution of existing data over the Internet is not very expensive,
   there are much larger costs associated with data acquisition and data
   curation. Additionally, making data usable by others is also costly.
   - The is a need to emphasise credit and recognition and an immediate
   award for the publishing of data. A data journal could play an essential
   role in providing incentives.
   - There was a discussion around whether some data should be charged for
   to cover expenses associated with the data production. One approach is to
   let the funding agencies cover such costs and include requirements as part
   of the data sharing plans. (Principle 5. has been extended to include a
   more specific recommendation for funders.)
   - There are different types and categories of data - getting the data
   which is just sitting on people’s hard-drives, for which there are no
   issues involved should be the priority at the first instance.
   - There are issues involved relating to the lack of a central repository
   and no uniform formats for making data available which could aid in
   interoperability.

*Open Economics principles and steps forward*

   - There are many kinds of data in economics and a lot of barriers and
   reasons for why much of it cannot be made public. The Open Economics
   principles refer to the data generated with public funds which can be made
   available and whether a strong case exist that this should be done.
   - There was a concern that the draft Principles may not reinstate
   sufficiently the risk of de-anonymising personal data and the risks
   involved - this acknowledgement should be emphasised (Principle 2. has been
   extended)
   - The Principles are short and describe some essential guidelines and
   are not messing around with exceptions, there will be some grey zones which
   could be covered by appendices and additional material. The recommendation
   for preferred licenses is mentioned in a footnote. Additional work may
   involve making specific recommendations to agencies (repositories, funders)
   who have power to implement change.
   - These principles could apply to any discipline - there is a need to
   distinguish what is different in economics
   - Fellowships for early career academics would be good as fellows would
   have more time and less of a vision and they can achieve a lot with support
   and guidance. They can have some guidelines but also room to experiment
   - There could be also benefits in making grants for specific researchers
   to make their data available or possibly for the generation of new and
   interesting data.
   - A community of senior academics should lead the effort. There is also
   a role for early stage professionals, who may have more time but lack ideas
   and direction - they should be also given some discretion in developing
   their projects.
   - Open data may be also linked with the research agendas of academics
   and possibly more funding should be directed in that area and such efforts
   should be also supported to insure that researchers would get recognition
   in their communities.

*Velichka Dimitrova

Open Economics Project Coordinator |
@vndimitrova<http://twitter.com/vndimitrova>

The Open Knowledge Foundation

Empowering through Open Knowledge
http://okfn.org/  | @okfn <http://twitter.com/OKFN>  | OKF on
Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/OKFNetwork>
|  Blog <http://blog.okfn.org/>  |  Newsletter<http://okfn.org/about/newsletter>
*

*Open Economics | http://openeconomics.net/ |
@okfnecon<http://twitter.com/okfnecon>| best practice for open
economic data
*

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**

** Bronwyn H. Hall
Professor of the Graduate School
University of California at Berkeley
Mailing address: **       **
123 Tamalpais Road
Berkeley, CA 94708
                                                          |
URL: http://bronwynhall.com
SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/author=16138
RePEc: http://authors.repec.org/pro/pha54/
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