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Open Data Access Policies and Strategies in the European Research Area and Beyond

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This report examines policies and strategies towards open access (OA) of scientific data in the European Research Area (ERA), Brazil, Canada, Japan and the US from 2000 onwards. The analysis examines strategies that aim to foster OA scientific data—such as the types of incentives given at the researcher and institutional levels and the level of compliance by researchers and funded organisations —and also examines how, and whether, these policies are monitored and enforced. The infrastructures developed to store and share OA scientific data are also examined.

The analysis is supported by findings from the literature on the global progression of OA scientific data since 2000—including its growth as a segment of scholarly publishing—as well as some of the broader trends, themes and debates that have emerged from the movement.

URL : http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/SM_EC_OA_Data.pdf

e-InfraNet: ‘Open’ as the default modus operandi for research and higher education

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This document is a policy paper from the e-InfraNet project concerning open approaches for the research and higher education communities across the European Research Area (ERA). The document has been produced to provide advice and guidance on this topic to the Commission.

In order to realize the full potential of ‘Open’ e-InfraNet recommends that a broad policy framework covering open access to content and infrastructure as well as open approaches to the further development of ‘Open’ itself, and to the way research and higher education is established and developed.

The basis for the policy framework as outlined in this paper is an overview of the current ‘Open’ landscape outlining contexts, drivers, achievements and effects of the various ‘opens’, as well as a number of common issues.”

URL : https://www.surf.nl/binaries/content/assets/surf/en/knowledgebase/2013/e-InfraNet-Open-as-the-Default-Modus-Operandi-for-Research-and-Higher-Education.pdf

If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them? Data Sharing and Reuse in the Long Tail of Science and Technology

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Research on practices to share and reuse data will inform the design of infrastructure to support data collection, management, and discovery in the long tail of science and technology. These are research domains in which data tend to be local in character, minimally structured, and minimally documented. We report on a ten-year study of the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center.

We found that CENS researchers are willing to share their data, but few are asked to do so, and in only a few domain areas do their funders or journals require them to deposit data. Few repositories exist to accept data in CENS research areas.. Data sharing tends to occur only through interpersonal exchanges. CENS researchers obtain data from repositories, and occasionally from registries and individuals, to provide context, calibration, or other forms of background for their studies. Neither CENS researchers nor those who request access to CENS data appear to use external data for primary research questions or for replication of studies.

CENS researchers are willing to share data if they receive credit and retain first rights to publish their results. Practices of releasing, sharing, and reusing of data in CENS reaffirm the gift culture of scholarship, in which goods are bartered between trusted colleagues rather than treated as commodities.

URL : If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them?

DOI : 10.1371/journal.pone.0067332

Open Access—Are the Barriers to Change Receding?

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The move from subscription only publishing of scholarly articles to open access has been much slower than previously anticipated by many Open Access (OA) advocates. Despite the many advantages that OA offers, this particular branch of E-commerce imposes several formidable barriers to change.

A framework conceptualizing these barriers that was developed over a decade ago was revisited to see if the significance of these barriers has changed. Nowadays, building the IT infrastructure, support from indexing services and finding a sustainable business model are no longer important barriers. For gold OA publishing the academic reward system is still a major obstacle, whereas more marketing and critical mass is needed for both gold OA and green OA.

Green OA self-archiving is still also strongly affected by what subscription publishers allow. In the overall balance the situation has nevertheless improved significantly.

URL : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/1/1/5

Toward Reproducible Computational Research: An Empirical Analysis of Data and Code Policy Adoption by Journals

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Journal policy on research data and code availability is an important part of the ongoing shift toward publishing reproducible computational science. This article extends the literature by studying journal data sharing policies by year (for both 2011 and 2012) for a referent set of 170 journals.

We make a further contribution by evaluating code sharing policies, supplemental materials policies, and open access status for these 170 journals for each of 2011 and 2012.

We build a predictive model of open data and code policy adoption as a function of impact factor and publisher and find higher impact journals more likely to have open data and code policies and scientific societies more likely to have open data and code policies than commercial publishers.

We also find open data policies tend to lead open code policies, and we find no relationship between open data and code policies and either supplemental material policies or open access journal status.

Of the journals in this study, 38% had a data policy, 22% had a code policy, and 66% had a supplemental materials policy as of June 2012. This reflects a striking one year increase of 16% in the number of data policies, a 30% increase in code policies, and a 7% increase in the number of supplemental materials policies.

We introduce a new dataset to the community that categorizes data and code sharing, supplemental materials, and open access policies in 2011 and 2012 for these 170 journals.

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0067111

Using bibliometrics to support the facilitation of cross-disciplinary communication

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Given the importance of cross-disciplinary research (CDR), facilitating CDR effectiveness is a priority for many institutions and funding agencies. There are a number of CDR types, however, and the effectiveness of facilitation efforts will require sensitivity to that diversity. This article presents a method characterizing a spectrum of CDR designed to inform facilitation efforts that relies on bibliometric techniques and citation data.

We illustrate its use by the Toolbox Project, an ongoing effort to enhance cross-disciplinary communication in CDR teams through structured, philosophical dialogue about research assumptions in a workshop setting. Toolbox Project workshops have been conducted with more than 85 research teams, but the project’s extensibility to an objectively characterized range of CDR collaborations has not been examined.

To guide wider application of the Toolbox Project, we have developed a method that uses multivariate statistical analyses of transformed citation proportions from published manuscripts to identify candidate areas of CDR, and then overlays information from previous Toolbox participant groups on these areas to determine candidate areas for future application.

The approach supplies 3 results of general interest:
1) A way to employ small data sets and familiar statistical techniques to characterize CDR spectra as a guide to scholarship on CDR patterns and trends.
2) A model for using bibliometric techniques to guide broadly applicable interventions similar to the Toolbox.
3) A method for identifying the location of collaborative CDR teams on a map of scientific activity, of use to research administrators, research teams, and other efforts to enhance CDR projects.

URL : http://www.cals.uidaho.edu/toolbox/pres/WilliamsEtAl-UsingBiblioToFacilitateCDC-JASIST-2013.pdf

Trust in Digital Repositories

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ISO 16363:2012, Space Data and Information Transfer Systems – Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories (ISO TRAC), outlines actions a repository can take to be considered trustworthy, but research examining whether the repository’s designated community of users associates such actions with trustworthiness has been limited. Drawing from this ISO document and the management and information systems literatures, this paper discusses findings from interviews with 66 archaeologists and quantitative social scientists.

We found similarities and differences across the disciplines and among the social scientists. Both disciplinary communities associated trust with a repository’s transparency. However, archaeologists mentioned guarantees of preservation and sustainability more frequently than the social scientists, who talked about institutional reputation. Repository processes were also linked to trust, with archaeologists more frequently citing metadata issues and social scientists discussing data selection and cleaning processes.

Among the social scientists, novices mentioned the influence of colleagues on their trust in repositories almost twice as much as the experts. We discuss the implications our findings have for identifying trustworthy repositories and how they extend the models presented in the management and information systems literatures.

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/8.1.143