Author : Claudio Gutierrez
Reflections on the Concept of Data and its Implications for Science and Society
La Data au service de l’innovation dans les Services d’Information Documentaires (SID) universitaires nationaux
Auteur/Author : Sennouni Amine
Appréhender la place de la Data dans les services d’information documentaires (SID) a été abordé en portant un aperçu sur la littérature traitant de la question.
Toutefois l’usage de la data dans les SID doit aussi être ancré dans la pratique quotidienne des structures info-documentaires dans le contexte marocain, en tentant de mettre à la loupe l’usage que fait les services d’information documentaires des données qu’ils produisent ou ils reçoivent dans leur fonctionnement et l’accomplissement de leur mission.
Ainsi, quatre responsables de bibliothèques et de centres de documentation ont été interrogés sur ces éléments à travers un questionnaire qui leur a été acheminé (un centre de documentation spécialisé, une bibliothèque publique, et deux bibliothèques universitaires).
An Institutional Approach to Developing Research Data Management Infrastructure
This article outlines the work that the University of Oxford is undertaking to implement a coordinated data management infrastructure. The rationale for the approach being taken by Oxford is presented, with particular attention paid to the role of each service division. This is followed by a consideration of the relative advantages and disadvantages of institutional data repositories, as opposed to national or international data centres. The article then focuses on two ongoing JISC-funded projects, ‘Embedding Institutional Data Curation Services in Research’ (Eidcsr) and ‘Supporting Data Management Infrastructure for the Humanities’ (Sudamih).
Both projects are intra-institutional collaborations and involve working with researchers to develop particular aspects of infrastructure, including: University policy, systems for the preservation and documentation of research data, training and support, software tools for the visualisation of large images, and creating and sharing databases via the Web (Database as a Service).
Tragedy of the Data Commons
Accurate data is vital to enlightened research and policymaking, particularly publicly available data that are redacted to protect the identity of individuals.
Legal academics, however, are campaigning against data anonymization as a means to protect privacy, contending that wealth of information available on the Internet enables malfeasors to reverse-engineer the data and identify individuals within them.
Privacy scholars advocate for new legal restrictions on the collection and dissemination of research data. This Article challenges the dominant wisdom, arguing that properly de-identified data is not only safe, but of extraordinary social utility.
It makes three core claims. First, legal scholars have misinterpreted the relevant literature from computer science and statistics, and thus have significantly overstated the futility of anonymizing data. Second, the available evidence demonstrates that the risks from anonymized data are theoretical – they rarely, if ever, materialize. Finally, anonymized data is crucial to beneficial social research, and constitutes a public resource – a commons – under threat of depletion.
The Article concludes with a radical proposal: since current privacy policies overtax valuable research without reducing any realistic risks, law should provide a safe harbor for the dissemination of research data.”
URL : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1789749