(...) formal definitions may never capture some of the nuances in common understandings of “privacy” and “utility,” nuances that are highly contextual and that depend on social factors, not just numbers. By analyzing some of those nuances, we can begin to understand the policy choices inherent in deciding whether and how to regulate data privacy across varying social contexts.See also Wu's paper here.
Q: Where do you look for scientific data? A: In scientific papers, stoopid! Sadly, of course, anyone who’s read a scientific paper will know that this isn’t true.
Researchers are increasingly reluctant to share the background details of their studies with other scientists according to new results from a survey of authors who published papers in the Annals of Internal Medicine in the last five years.
The RECODE project is looking at open data policy for EU-funded research. I attended a workshop in Sheffield yesterday for a diverse stakeholder group of researchers, funders and data providers. Along with a nice lunch, they delivered their first draft report, in which they synthesised current literature on open research data and presented five case studies of research practice in different disciplines. The format was very interactive with several break-out groups and discussions.
The open access movement is forcing publishers to take down paywalls, making publicly funded research available to the public for free. But beyond that a more important development is pacing in the wings – that of open data.
The upgrade builds on the President Obama’s May 2013 Open Data Executive Order that aims to fuse open-data practices into the Federal Government’s DNA. (...) The backend of Next.Data.gov is CKAN and is powered by Solr—a powerful search engine that will make it even easier to find relevant datasets online.
Open Access is the drive to make sure all the academic literature is freely available to everyone. Open Data is the drive to get scientists to publish their actual raw data so that integrity of science can be assured and the data can be re-used by others. Together these movements are ushering in something of a scientific revolution - but how will this all be done in practice? Mike takes us through what is happening right now. To see his recent article on Open Data, please click here.
Open data is the idea that scientific data should be freely available to all, without restrictions, in searchable online repositories. The open data movement is gaining momentum in the scientific community because of its promise to enable more frequent replication of studies and to accelerate the pace of research. But the advantages for science education are just as compelling.
PLOS Blogs.
In recent years many government organizations have implemented Open Government Data (OGD) policies to make their data publicly available. This data usually covers a broad set of domains, from financial to ecological information. While these initiatives often report anecdotal success regarding improved efficiency and governmental savings, the potential applications of OGD remain a largely uncharted territory. In this paper, we claim that there is an important portion of the population who could benefit from the use of OGD, but who cannot do so because they cannot perform the essential operations needed to collect, process, merge, and make sense of the data. The reasons behind these problems are multiple, the most critical one being a fundamental lack of expertise and technical knowledge. We propose the use of visualizations as a way to alleviate this situation. Visualizations provide a simple mechanism to understand and communicate large amounts of data. We also show evidence that there is a need for exploratory mechanisms to navigate the data and metadata in these visualizations. Finally, we provide a discussion on a set of features that tools should have in order to facilitate the creation of visualizations by users. We briefly present the implementation of these features in a new tool prototype focused on simplifying the creation of visualization based on Open Data. Read more here
We are seeing a similar culture change in neuroimaging. The Human Connectome Project is scanning 1,200 healthy volunteers with state of the art technology to define variation in the brain’s wiring. The imaging data, cognitive data, and de-identified demographic data on each volunteer are available, along with a workbench of web-based analytical tools, so that qualified researchers can obtain access and interrogate one of the largest imaging data sets anywhere.Read more here.
Today’s release of an Open Data Charter by the G8 is testimony to the growing importance of open data worldwide. The Charter recognizes the central role open data can play in improving government and governance and in stimulating growth through innovation in data-driven products and services.
Interesting enough, research shows that there is a weakening relationship between the impact factor and papers’ citations in the digital age. And that can have consequences, according to the authors: ”If this pattern should continue, it might bring an end to the use of impact factor as a way to evaluate the quality of journals, papers and researcher”.
(…) companies need not worry about releasing data about specific genetic traits that bring them profits, but simply the data that could help university scientists improve nutritional conditions for the poor. (…) March for the public investment into agricultural biotechnology research and an open data policy on industry seed research.
Advice to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on data release from clinical trials, published last week, should ultimately help to improve healthcare but reveals widely divided opinion on exactly how data sharing should happen.F1000 Blog.
“Analysts believe an open data strategy should be a top priority for any organization that uses the Web as a channel for delivering goods and services. Open data strategies support outside-in business practices that generate growth and innovation.”
This week, economists have been astonished to find that a famous academic paper often used to make the case for austerity cuts contains major errors. Another surprise is that the mistakes, by two eminent Harvard professors, were spotted by a student doing his homework.BBC News. See also the OKNF’s blogpost:
REINHART-ROGOFF REVISITED: WHY WE NEED OPEN DATA IN ECONOMICS
Open science is a philosophy as much as it is an imperative. It is asking scientists to give up the unspoken reciprocal partnerships between data generators and those who use the data down the road. (…) Reciprocation is necessary, but that it is a potential benefit provided to the data generators that we may be losing in a move to central repositories. Data generation is costly, it is high (or higher) risk, and it is often slow, but it is critical to move macro-scale research forward, and to find the teleconnections between ecosystems that can help push science forward.Blog.
New rules being pushed forward by the commission still need formal approval from the European Parliament. But Neelie Kroes, a European Commission vice president said: “Opening up public data means opening up business opportunities, creating jobs and building communities. I welcome the Council’s agreement to this culture change.”
The LinkedUp project is very pleased to announce the launch of the LinkedUp challenge. This is a series of three competitions (Veni, Vidi, and Vici) promoting the innovative use of linked and open data in an educational context.OKFN Blog.
Social sector organizations are in the business of changing the world, and the information they collect and use should be the catalyst for making that happen. Courtesy of broadband Internet and mobile wifi we now have global, low-cost ways to share data that every social-purpose organization can plug into. From it, they should be able to draw what they need about previous experiments, effective practices, and achieved outcomes, as well as what has failed and why. That way, local social entrepreneurs can mimic what works elsewhere and share their ideas, successes, and failures.
HBR Blog Network.