Because good research needs good data Funded by: Perspectives on Digital Curation, Data and Publishing Why, How, Where? Kevin Ashley Director, DCC [email protected]

Because good research needs good data

Funded by:

© Digital Curation Centre, 2009. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 Scotland:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/scotland/

Perspectives on Digital Curation, Data and PublishingWhy, How, Where?

Kevin Ashley

Director, DCC

[email protected]

•High Heid Yin,

4th Bloomsbury Conference on e-publishing, UCL, London – 20100624 Kevin Ashley, DCC CC-BY-SA

DATA

PUBLISHING


TURN into a diagram

• Idea – funding – collection – analysis - publish



Overview

• Why care about citing and/or referencing data?• Data is different – and that matters• Approaches, and their strengths & weaknesses


WHY

CARE?

#1


LIDAR & RADAR images of ice cloud – H. Ruschennberg


WHY

CARE?

#2


142010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020

02468

101214161820

2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020

University funding – the future is scary


“The Data Behind The Graph”

• Data in support of publication should be as accessible as the publication itself

• Allows challenge, replication, understanding• Often undertaken by publishers, or ventures

associated with them• Sometimes ‘associated items’ to DOI of paper,

sometimes objects with own DOI


Integrity goes further…

• The data that I publish is not always the data that I collected

• Sometimes, that matters


WHY

CARE?

#3


Impact

• Making data accessible increases citation rates• Better for authors; better for publishers• Piwowar, Day & Fridsma (2007):

• 45% of studies make data accessible• They receive 85% of citations

• Caution: correlation is not causation


WHY

CARE?

#4


I ♥ your data!

I don’t ♥ what you said about it.


E.G…..

• Your data on rock types of Crete supported a publication in a geological journal

• Your data on rock types of Crete supports my theory about the sources of pigments used on Minoan pottery

• I won’t be publishing in a geological journal• Your conclusions about events 1 billion years ago

have no relevance for me


WHY

CARE?

#5


Understanding Biodiversity

• We don’t understand what drives it• What helps, hinders speciation• We believe it to be good• No one project or data source is enough


Research on Biodiversity…

• Requires many different data sources• Not all will be published• Not all publications are for similar research

reasons, so…• Citing the publication is (often) irrelevant• Some is research data, other government or

reference data• There are probably gaps that need filling


WHY

CARE?

#6


People’s lives may depend on it

• Watch Josh Sommer @ SAGE Bionetworks

http://sagecongress.org/WP/presentations


Data

Is

Different







Where can it happen

Global, international

Nationally

InstitutionBy Subject

Research Group



Approaches at publication

• Giving data digital object identifiers (DOI)• E.g. DataCite• Capturing data subsets at point of publication• Freezing those subsets somewhere• Publication-led approach


Who are the actors

• Scholars, librarians, publishers…• … aren’t enough• They aren’t even the only people doing this now.• They are a very big part of the answer, though• Curation happens before, after, without,

publication


One datacenter: NOAA• General form for citing published World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data:

• Anderson, D.W., W.L. Prell, and N.J. Barratt. 1989. Estimates of sea surface temperature in the Coral Sea at the last glacial maximum. Paleoceanography 4(6):615-627. Data archived at the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, Boulder, Colorado, USA

• General form for citing unpublished World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data: • Rind, D. 1994. General Circulation Model Output Data Set. IGBP PAGES/World

Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series #1994-012. NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

• Citation for Data archived via a Data Cooperative: • McAndrews, J.H. 1996. Martin Pond pollen record. In E.C. Grimm et al., editors,

North American Pollen Database. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology. NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

• Citation for group of contributors that is too large to cite individually:• Contributors of the International Tree-Ring Data Bank, IGBP PAGES/World Data

Center for Paleoclimatology, NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, Colorado, USA.


But data changes, and is big

• When many publications use bits of one dataset…

• When a dataset changes hourly….• … and is petabyte-sized• …snapshots don’t cut it• They also lose context of original


Publication A Publication C Publication DPublication B

Data Object AData Object B Data Object C Data Object D

Original Source Data


Data Management vs Curation

• UC3 view• “Curation value can be added… by enabling

creative use, reuse, in whole or part or in aggregation…”

• Facilitate by:• Persistent citation & actionable reference• Discovery of content & contextual description• Annotation for enriched description


Citing big data accurately

• Don’t make copies – keep change records• Create reference mechanisms that allow

reference to a specific change point• C.f. ‘Memento’ technique for referencing web

pages• Requires cooperation between curator &

referencer


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On Citing Data

• Peter Buneman. How to cite curated databases and how to make them citable. In Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management, pages 195-203, July 2006

• Some serious computer science – some for a very general audience


Buneman’s desiderata

• Let C be a citation, <C> the thing cited• D1: For any citation C, <C> shall be fixed• D2: Any citable thing T should contain a C such

that <C> = T• D3: Databases should be citable at multiple levels

of coarseness• D4: If C and P are citations and <P> is coarser

than <C>, then location info in P should be in C• D5: Versioning is done at database level


Acknowledgements

• De Spullenmannen & Harmen G Zijp (http://www.spullenmannen.nl/)

• Jaxa.jp (satellite image)• NOAA• NDAD/Crown Copyright/Happy Computers Ltd



Summary

• Thinking of data solely as adjunct to publication is too narrow a view

• Current practice may not extend easily• Data is often living – treat it as such• There’s more to the world than scholarly research• Hidden data is wasted data

Documents

Because good research needs good data Funded by: Perspectives on Digital Curation, Data and Publishing Why, How, Where? Kevin Ashley Director, DCC [email protected]