Introducing the Journal Research Data Policy Bank (JoRD)-Project

Journal Research Data Policy Bank (JoRD) is a JISC funded initiative conducting a feasibility study into the scope and shape of a sustainable service that will collate and summarise journal policies on Research Data to provide researchers, managers of research data and other stakeholders with an easy source of reference to understand and comply with these policies. Read the rest of this entry »

Open Economics Workgroup provides information and data sets

Since spring 2011 the Open Economics Workgroup is active in the UK and beyond. The workgroup is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation in association with the Centre for Intellectual and Property Law (CIPIL) at the University of Cambridge.

The members of the working group consist of leading academics and researchers, public and private sector economists, representatives from national and international public bodies and other experts from around the world.

Read the rest of this entry »

Data Availability Policy: American Economic Review

As announced in my previous blogpost, I ‘m starting the presentation of some data availability policies and replication policies with the American Economic Review (AER). The AER is a flagship of the economic profession and one of the top ranked journals in this scientific discipline.
The AER was published in 1911 for the first time. Only 7 – 10 percent of the submissions are accepted and later on published.

The AER adopted a so called replication policy in 1986 – despite the fact that studies (for example by Dewald, Thursby and Anderson) already claimed, that a replication policy is not enough to promote replicable results.
In their policy, the Review pledged authors to provide datasets and code for processing the data to other scientists that are interested in replicating the results on request.

Replication policies have often failed, even if the corresponding author is willing to support other researchers…and I imagine that this szenario is not very common …After publishing an article, authors mostly don’t have incentives to prepare the data and code for other researchers. It costs time and the rewards the scientific system pays for sharing data often are marginal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Report describes information practices in the physical sciences

The Research Information Network (RIN), the Institute of Physics (IOP), Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP) and the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in the UK have just commissioned a report that examines information practices in the physical sciences. It follows the previous case studies in the life sciences and the humanities.

This report uses seven case studies (particle physics, astrophysics gamma ray burst, nuclear physics, chemistry, earth science, nanoscience and users of the zooniverse platform) to understand how researchers in the physical sciences find, access, use and share information.

In the introduction the authors stated:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Social Life of Data

Martin Hall, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford, addresses in his blogpost some interesting questions and positions related to open data:

First he states that access to and use of data may be shaped as much by social conventions as by available technology.

He quotes a report published by NESTA and RIN to illustrate what he means:

“Cultures vary in different disciplines, which can itself cause difficulties in cross-disciplinary work; but researchers are typically both co-operative and competitive. The key currency for securing competitive career rewards is publication of articles, conference papers and monographs; and many researchers regard the data and other resources that they create in the course of their research as their intellectual capital which they wish to exploit and mine in order to produce new publications over an extended period. Some researchers fear that openness involves a loss of control, and a risk of being scooped by others”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Data Publishing: arguably a good thing-but there isn’t that much of it. Why?

“If the data and related metadata collected for impact evaluations was more readily discoverable, searchable, and made available, the world would be a better place. “

With this global statement Markus Goldstein, a researcher of the World Bank, started his blogpost about a better access to impact evaluation data.  For Goldstein, the advantages to access this kind of data are overwhelming:

“It would be easier to replicate studies and, in the process, to expand them by for example: trying other outcome indicators; checking robustness; and looking for heterogeneity effects (e.g. gender). There is also a wealth of other things one could do with the related metadata, including: looking at how different wording of survey questions generates different answers and getting parameters for power calculations. Last but not least, making these data available would allow for a wide range of non-impact evaluation research.”

Drivers and barriers in data sharing [Update]

The ODE project has published a collection of success stories and lessons learned in the area of data sharing, re-use and preservation.

Ten stories have been selected from a series of interviewed carried out to establish a baseline for the drivers and barriers in data exchange.

You will find the full report here.

Update 25-10-2011:
Another report of the ODE project (“Integration of Data and Publications“) is related to the scientific communication and shows actual trends – e.g. it describes how libraries and publishers are dealing with research data and how they make them accessible.

One example: the report lists five abstract researcher requirements for integrating data and publication:

1. Researchers need somewhere to put data and make it safe for reuse
2. Researchers need to control its sharing and access
3. Researchers need the ability to integrate data and publication
4. Researchers need to get credit for data as a first class research object
5. Researchers need someone to pay for the costs of data availability and re-use

Quite interesting findings for our EDaWaX-Project- especially requirement 3 is a goal of our project…

An executive summary of the ODE-report is available here.

Image Source: Opportunities for Data Exchange – Project (ODE). Cover of the report: “Ten Tales of Drivers and Barriers in Data Sharing. Alliance for Permanent Access (APA). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/