Open Data and academic institutions?

[Gerry Tychon-2]

Hello to all ...

I thought I would ask the Civic Access collective brain if they had
any comments with regard to academic institutions and participation or
advocacy of open data.

It seems to me that, other than some individuals associated with
academic institutions, there is not much presence. Where I do read or
hear something it tends to be insular rather than societal in nature.

And to paraphrase a communication I had with one Canadian university
"we only included the words 'open data' in our planning documents last
year -- you can't expect us to have done anything yet".

Maybe there is more I am unaware of.

Thanks for any info ... gerry tychon

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

Gerry;

The lab where I work at Carleton has been very engaged for decades in access to geomatics data and research data.  And you are aware of my work.  There are some books coming out of Library or Information studies abroad, and some academic in Europe writing on the topic.

In terms of advocacy the topic comes up frequently during open access week in Canada which is coming up soon, research librarians are being educated on initiatives in their towns, and most libraries in universities have an open access publishing movement as do some of the student associations.

Was there something specifically you were looking for?

Cheers
t

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 4:16 PM, Gerry Tychon <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello to all ...

I thought I would ask the Civic Access collective brain if they had
any comments with regard to academic institutions and participation or
advocacy of open data.

It seems to me that, other than some individuals associated with
academic institutions, there is not much presence. Where I do read or
hear something it tends to be insular rather than societal in nature.

And to paraphrase a communication I had with one Canadian university
"we only included the words 'open data' in our planning documents last
year -- you can't expect us to have done anything yet".

Maybe there is more I am unaware of.

Thanks for any info ... gerry tychon
_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

--

Tracey P. Lauriault

Post Doctoral Fellow

Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre

https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault

http://datalibre.ca/
613-234-2805
 

[David Eaves]

I've been asked by a few universities to speak on the subject - and I generally implore them to think about it internally, but there is not, as far as I can tell, any coherent approach to it or any organization that has taken the issue on.



On 2012-09-06, at 1:16 PM, Gerry Tychon wrote:

> Hello to all ...
>
> I thought I would ask the Civic Access collective brain if they had
> any comments with regard to academic institutions and participation or
> advocacy of open data.
>
> It seems to me that, other than some individuals associated with
> academic institutions, there is not much presence. Where I do read or
> hear something it tends to be insular rather than societal in nature.
>
> And to paraphrase a communication I had with one Canadian university
> "we only included the words 'open data' in our planning documents last
> year -- you can't expect us to have done anything yet".
>
> Maybe there is more I am unaware of.
>
> Thanks for any info ... gerry tychon
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

[Stéphane Guidoin]

 From my limited experience here in Montréal:
- No university/academic institution has a public open data policy
- Some prof or departments support open data but with limited capabilities
- Some profs seem to see open data as a threat since they sometimes
spent years to gather and get access to data and they see that as a kind
of edge in terms of research and publication (that what I heard from a
limited number of people, I can't say it has any statistical value!)

This week end (Sept 8th) with the urban planning school of McGill, Open
North organizes a city-oriented hackathon named "hack ta ville". We
specifically did it at McGill in order bring academics in the open data
world. From what I see, a lot of hackers and students registered (275
people for the moment), but I see very few teachers... although we did a
lot of reach out toward profs (urban planning, transportation, design,
etc.).

I know that coming to a hackathon is not the only thing that can be done
in terms of "participation and advocacy of open data", but to me it's a
sign of the lack of interest.

Stéphane

Le 12-09-06 16:55, David Eaves a écrit :

> I've been asked by a few universities to speak on the subject - and I generally implore them to think about it internally, but there is not, as far as I can tell, any coherent approach to it or any organization that has taken the issue on.
>
>
>
> On 2012-09-06, at 1:16 PM, Gerry Tychon wrote:
>
>> Hello to all ...
>>
>> I thought I would ask the Civic Access collective brain if they had
>> any comments with regard to academic institutions and participation or
>> advocacy of open data.
>>
>> It seems to me that, other than some individuals associated with
>> academic institutions, there is not much presence. Where I do read or
>> hear something it tends to be insular rather than societal in nature.
>>
>> And to paraphrase a communication I had with one Canadian university
>> "we only included the words 'open data' in our planning documents last
>> year -- you can't expect us to have done anything yet".
>>
>> Maybe there is more I am unaware of.
>>
>> Thanks for any info ... gerry tychon
>> _______________________________________________
>> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>> [hidden email]
>> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss
>

[Heather Morrison-2]

Here are some resources on open access relating to academia. For researchers, questions around data tend to revolve around particular academic disciplines rather than institutions.

Biomedical researchers are interested in biomedical-related datasets. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is very much a leader in this area - from the PubMedCentral site, see the list of resources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/

From here, you can access a wide variety of searchable data, including PubMed Compound, PubMed Substance, and genomics data. In this field, researchers are very much seeing the value of sharing data, and we are beginning to see journals requiring publication of datasets along with articles.

The Open Access Directory has a list of data repositories:
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Data_repositories

Where institutions have a largely future role to play is hosting and preserving research data produced by their faculty members. Many institutions will have very specific services relating to local programs (e.g. the data required by the Neptune project in BC). What is needed to build the future is building a culture of data sharing, which will probably require that researchers be recognized for their datasets, because if tenure and promotion is based only on article publications, there is incentive to withhold data to mine it as fully as possible. Institutions will need to have a robust infrastructure for hosting, serving, curating, and preserving data - not easy or inexpensive tasks.

Not all research data will, or should, be open data. Consider personal health information, for example. In some cases, opening up data for research purposes will require quite stringent security and licensing arrangements.

best,

Heather Morrison
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

Also, the libraries are members of the data liberation initiative.

I forgot, that CIPPIC is an open data legal clinic at Ottawa U, Michael Geist is at Ottawa U, as is Elizabeth Judge and Teresa Scassa, all open data, open access and access to infrastructure profs from a legal perspective.

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:22 PM, Heather Morrison <[hidden email]> wrote:

Here are some resources on open access relating to academia. For researchers, questions around data tend to revolve around particular academic disciplines rather than institutions.

Biomedical researchers are interested in biomedical-related datasets. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is very much a leader in this area - from the PubMedCentral site, see the list of resources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/

>From here, you can access a wide variety of searchable data, including PubMed Compound, PubMed Substance, and genomics data. In this field, researchers are very much seeing the value of sharing data, and we are beginning to see journals requiring publication of datasets along with articles.

The Open Access Directory has a list of data repositories:
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Data_repositories

Where institutions have a largely future role to play is hosting and preserving research data produced by their faculty members. Many institutions will have very specific services relating to local programs (e.g. the data required by the Neptune project in BC). What is needed to build the future is building a culture of data sharing, which will probably require that researchers be recognized for their datasets, because if tenure and promotion is based only on article publications, there is incentive to withhold data to mine it as fully as possible. Institutions will need to have a robust infrastructure for hosting, serving, curating, and preserving data - not easy or inexpensive tasks.

Not all research data will, or should, be open data. Consider personal health information, for example. In some cases, opening up data for research purposes will require quite stringent security and licensing arrangements.

best,

Heather Morrison
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

--

Tracey P. Lauriault

Post Doctoral Fellow

Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre

https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault

http://datalibre.ca/
613-234-2805
 

[Alex Lougheed]

Further, the federal granting agencies published a "comprehensive brief on open access" in June 2011 as their first attempt at a shared open access policy. On a forward-thinking note, the brief made equivalent reference to open access to scholarly publications (of which a significant and growing number of publications are) and open access to research data (where infrastructure somewhat exists, but there is limited content.) A committee between the three has been struck, but it is slow moving in its policy development, with expectations of external consultations coming out in over a year. The strongest advocates in this direction would be the librarian associations and some learned societies, but they have limited national and institutional influence. Concordia University has the model OA policy right now, and it mentions data. Student associations are becoming more and more engaged on the issue, as the young'ns grew up on the internet, and both student federal advocacy groups have policies encouraging open access to publications and data.

Nearly all the institutional data in the country is collected by StatCan in partnership with national organizations. Some are freely published online, such as CAUBO's financial information databases, but they're not open data. Without third party coordination, there isn't national consistency. Open data doesn't appear to be on the radar of the institutional researchers, doing a review of recent conference proceedings: http://www.cirpa-acpri.ca/.

Alex Lougheed
m. 613 700 2358

alougheed.ca  twitter.com/alox

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:22 PM, Heather Morrison <[hidden email]> wrote:

Here are some resources on open access relating to academia. For researchers, questions around data tend to revolve around particular academic disciplines rather than institutions.

Biomedical researchers are interested in biomedical-related datasets. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is very much a leader in this area - from the PubMedCentral site, see the list of resources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/

>From here, you can access a wide variety of searchable data, including PubMed Compound, PubMed Substance, and genomics data. In this field, researchers are very much seeing the value of sharing data, and we are beginning to see journals requiring publication of datasets along with articles.

The Open Access Directory has a list of data repositories:
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Data_repositories

Where institutions have a largely future role to play is hosting and preserving research data produced by their faculty members. Many institutions will have very specific services relating to local programs (e.g. the data required by the Neptune project in BC). What is needed to build the future is building a culture of data sharing, which will probably require that researchers be recognized for their datasets, because if tenure and promotion is based only on article publications, there is incentive to withhold data to mine it as fully as possible. Institutions will need to have a robust infrastructure for hosting, serving, curating, and preserving data - not easy or inexpensive tasks.

Not all research data will, or should, be open data. Consider personal health information, for example. In some cases, opening up data for research purposes will require quite stringent security and licensing arrangements.

best,

Heather Morrison
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

[Alex Joseph]

Hi Gerry,

You may be interested in these initiatives around research data sharing, frameworks, and platforms:

• Mapping the Data Landscape: Report of the 2011 Canadian Research Data Summit - http://rds-sdr.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/docs/data_summit-sommet_donnees/Data_Summit_Report.pdf
• In 2007 U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure announced a request for proposals with the name Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partner (DataNet) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datanet US National Science Foundation is funding 2 projects:
• DataONE - http://www.dataone.org 
• Data Conservancy - http://dataconservancy.org

• Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (Australia) -  http://tern.org.au/

---
Alex Joseph
M.E.Des., MBA, EP, LEED AP
Executive Director 
Explorus Data Solutions Inc. - Water and Environmental Hub 

Phone <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">403-826-3915

Toll Free <a href="tel:[phone]%C2%A0ext%2015" value="[phone]" target="_blank">1-866-698-8789 ext 15

Fax <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">403-455-1217
 


www.waterenvironmentalhub.ca

www.letthedataflow.ca
www.apps4water.ca

www.explorus.org

    

Explorus is a not-for-profit organization that enables the collaborative and open flow of environmental data, information, and knowledge.

3608 - 33 Street NW  ||  Calgary, AB  ||  T2L 2A6
Main Phone: [phone]  ||  Main Fax: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">403-455-1217

 

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 14:16:04 -0600
From: Gerry Tychon <[hidden email]>
To: civicaccess discuss <[hidden email]>
Subject: [CivicAccess-discuss]  Open Data and academic institutions?
Message-ID:
        <[hidden email]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hello to all ...

I thought I would ask the Civic Access collective brain if they had
any comments with regard to academic institutions and participation or
advocacy of open data.

It seems to me that, other than some individuals associated with
academic institutions, there is not much presence. Where I do read or
hear something it tends to be insular rather than societal in nature.

And to paraphrase a communication I had with one Canadian university
"we only included the words 'open data' in our planning documents last
year -- you can't expect us to have done anything yet".

Maybe there is more I am unaware of.

Thanks for any info ... gerry tychon


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