Robin Rice, The Internet and democratisation of access to data. Excerpt: 'It seems that the social sciences have been simply evolving steadily since the advent of computers and networking, compared to other disciplines which have been revolutionised (think of biology-human genetics, particle physics, or astronomy)....[T]he problem of access for research data is more than discovery; the user requires tools to make the data usable, and fairly intimate knowledge of how the dataset was collected, variables derived, etc. There is also a tension between protecting the subjects' confidentiality, and releasing as much demographic background on the respondents as possible to maximise the re-usability of the data....The world of open access publishing and digital repositories seems to be the most important new trend in democratising access to data....Recent funding by JISC toward the development of institutional repositories does reflect some level of national commitment [in the UK] to open access and institutional repositories. Although it is early days, this could be the beginning of a thousand flowers blooming, and a sea-change in the work of social science researchers, librarians and archivists, as universities rise to the challenge of 'curating' their own scholarly assets, including perhaps, the actual or derived datasets upon which published research papers are based. Is there any chance of this becoming a widespread trend with only a smattering of project-based funding? Is it even desirable, compared to providing additional funds for centralised, domain-specific trusted repositories such as the UK Data Archive?'
Melanie Wright, How has the internet changed the way we access data? Excerpt: 'Calling it a revolution is cliche, but there is hardly a better word for it. And as in radical political change, alongside structural, organisational changes come attitudinal changes. User expectations are light years from where they were in 1996. In data services, there are in my mind, three major influences which have caused a paradigm shift in user expectations and therefore in the way data services do their business. These three influences neatly fall into the three fundamental services provided by data centres such as the UKDA: finding data, accessing data, and using data. And they are: Google, Amazon, and GUI menu-driven analysis software (SPSS for Windows)....Some might view these three influences and say, this is how the internet has destroyed data services — dumbing down our search tools, pandering to the lowest-common-denominator naive user, enabling far too many people to conduct far too many risky and suspect analyses on data they aren’t trained to understand, and increasing the risk of confidentiality breaks and disclosure logarithmically. Others might say, the internet has been the greatest boon imaginable, allowing more socially relevant data and information be disseminated to more people, enabling more 5-star research to be conducted, upon which more evidence-based policy is evolved, allowing for a more enlightened and better world.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/23/2005 10:49:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
