News blog

Privacy and Utility in Data Sets

(...) 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.

Opening up and sharing

My mantra at the time was ‘Be first, or be forgotten’ – once a few good teachers decide to share their lectures without restriction, it is only a matter of time before the internet is saturated with free knowledge for all. When this happens, and it has, the value of any one teacher’s private content is dramatically decreased, irrespective of whether it subsequently becomes shared or not. But people will remember those who were first, and indeed those pioneers have taken the opportunity to uniquely shape the way scientific teaching evolved.


Jean-Claude Bradley.

A Vision For Global Research Data Infrastructures

Karagiannis et al. on Global Research Data Infrastructurs for the year 2020.
A general-purpose Global Research Data Infrastructure (GRDI) for all sciences and research purposes is not conceivable for the next decade as there are too many discipline-specific modalities that currently prevail for such generalisation efforts to be effective. On the other hand, a more pragmatic approach is to start from what currently exists, identify best practices and key issues, and promote effective inter-domain collaboration among different components forming an ecosystem. This will promote interoperability, data exchange, data preservation, and distributed access (among others).

UK’s open access policies have global consequences

A report released recently has highlighted how out of step the UK has become with the rest of the world on open access policies. The UK has sought to be a leader in making publicly-funded research openly available but has taken a very different approach to Australia and even the European Commission. The problem is, scientific publishing is a global business, so the consequences of the UK’s decisions are felt far beyond its borders.

Not breaking news: many scientific studies are ultimately proved wrong!

When a theory is shown to be incorrect or a publication in error, it is all too easy to think that the scientist who came up with this theory is a liar or a dishonest fraudster intent on misleading the public for personal gain. Or as Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, puts it: Most scientific studies are wrong, and they are wrong because scientists are interested in funding and careers rather than truth.


The Guardian, Occam's Corner.

How open should your data be?

Robin Rice on the Edinburgh Research Data Blog:
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.