Open data, [open] access: linking data sharing and article sharing in the Earth Sciences

Author : Samantha Teplitzky

Introduction

The norms of a research community influence practice, and norms of openness and sharing can be shaped to encourage researchers who share in one aspect of their research cycle to share in another.

Different sets of mandates have evolved to require that research data be made public, but not necessarily articles resulting from that collected data. In this paper, I ask to what extent publications in the Earth Sciences are more likely to be open access (in all of its definitions) when researchers open their data through the Pangaea repository.

Methods

Citations from Pangaea data sets were studied to determine the level of open access for each article.

Results

This study finds that the proportion of gold open access articles linked to the repository increased 25% from 2010 to 2015 and 75% of articles were available from multiple open sources.

Discussion

The context for increased preference for gold open access is considered and future work linking researchers’ decisions to open their work to the adoption of open access mandates is proposed.

URL : Open data, [open] access: linking data sharing and article sharing in the Earth Sciences

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2150

Data Management: New Tools, New Organization, and New Skills in a French Research Institute

Authors : Caroline Martin, Colette Cadiou, Emmanuelle Jannès-Ober

In the context of E-science and open access, visibility and impact of scientific results and data have become important aspects for spreading information to users and to the society in general.

The objective of this general trend of the economy is to feed the innovation process and create economic value. In our institute, the French National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, Irstea, the department in charge of scientific and technical information, with the help of other professionals (Scientists, IT professionals, ethics advisors…), has recently developed suitable services for the researchers and for their needs concerning the data management in order to answer European recommendations for open data.

This situation has demanded to review the different workflows between databases, to question the organizational aspects between skills, occupations, and departments in the institute.

In fact, the data management involves all professionals and researchers to asset their working ways together.

URL : Data Management: New Tools, New Organization, and New Skills in a French Research Institute

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10196

Evaluating and Promoting Open Data Practices in Open Access Journals

Authors : Eleni Castro, Mercè Crosas, Alex Garnett, Kasey Sheridan, Micah Altman

In the last decade there has been a dramatic increase in attention from the scholarly communications and research community to open access (OA) and open data practices.

These are potentially related, because journal publication policies and practices both signal disciplinary norms, and provide direct incentives for data sharing and citation. However, there is little research evaluating the data policies of OA journals.

In this study, we analyze the state of data policies in open access journals, by employing random sampling of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Open Journal Systems (OJS) journal directories, and applying a coding framework that integrates both previous studies and emerging taxonomies of data sharing and citation.

This study, for the first time, reveals both the low prevalence of data sharing policies and practices in OA journals, which differs from the previous studies of commercial journals’ in specific disciplines.

URL : Evaluating and Promoting Open Data Practices in Open Access Journals

On the Reuse of Scientific Data

Authors : Irene V. Pasquetto, Bernadette M. Randles, Christine L. Borgman

While science policy promotes data sharing and open data, these are not ends in themselves. Arguments for data sharing are to reproduce research, to make public assets available to the public, to leverage investments in research, and to advance research and innovation.

To achieve these expected benefits of data sharing, data must actually be reused by others. Data sharing practices, especially motivations and incentives, have received far more study than has data reuse, perhaps because of the array of contested concepts on which reuse rests and the disparate contexts in which it occurs.

Here we explicate concepts of data, sharing, and open data as a means to examine data reuse. We explore distinctions between use and reuse of data.

Lastly we propose six research questions on data reuse worthy of pursuit by the community: How can uses of data be distinguished from reuses? When is reproducibility an essential goal? When is data integration an essential goal? What are the tradeoffs between collecting new data and reusing existing data? How do motivations for data collection influence the ability to reuse data? How do standards and formats for data release influence reuse opportunities?

We conclude by summarizing the implications of these questions for science policy and for investments in data reuse.

URL : On the Reuse of Scientific Data

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-008

Openness as social praxis

Authors : Matthew Longshore Smith, Ruhiya Seward

Since the early 2000s, there has been an explosion in the usage of the term open, arguably stemming from the advent of networked technologies — including the Internet and mobile technologies.

‘Openness’ seems to be everywhere, and takes many forms: from open knowledge, open education, open data and open science, to open Internet, open medical records systems and open innovation. These applications of openness are having a profound, and sometimes transformative, effect on social, political and economic life.

This explosion of the use of the term has led to multiple interpretations, ambiguities, and even misunderstandings, not to mention countless debates and disagreements over precise definitions.

The paper “Fifty shades of open” by Pomerantz and Peek (2016) highlighted the increasing ambiguity and even confusion surrounding this term. This article builds on Pomerantz and Peek’s attempt to disambiguate the term by offering an alternative understanding to openness — that of social praxis.

More specifically, our framing can be broken down into three social processes: open production, open distribution, and open consumption. Each process shares two traits that make them open: you don’t have to pay (free price), and anyone can participate (non-discrimination) in these processes.

We argue that conceptualizing openness as social praxis offers several benefits. First, it provides a way out of a variety of problems that result from ambiguities and misunderstandings that emerge from the current multitude of uses of openness.

Second, it provides a contextually sensitive understanding of openness that allows space for the many different ways openness is experienced — often very different from the way that more formal definitions conceptualize it.

Third, it points us towards an approach to developing practice-specific theory that we believe helps us build generalizable knowledge on what works (or not), for whom, and in what contexts.

URL : http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7073

Distance informationnelle scientifique : le risque d’une altérité informationnelle ?

Auteur/Author : Christian Marcon

A partir de l’hypothèse selon laquelle les chercheurs et laboratoires qui ne développent pas une politique de mise en ligne de leurs publications et données de recherche se mettent à l’écart du mouvement international d’open data scientifique en accroissant la distance informationnelle avec leurs travaux, cette communication présente les conclusions de l’étude des pratiques des laboratoires en sciences humaines de l’université de Poitiers en matière de données de recherche.

URL : http://revue-cossi.info/numeros/n-1-2017-l-information-la-communication-et-les-organisations-au-defi-de-l-alterite/562-1-2017-revue-marcon

La place des données publiques dans la communication territoriale : le cas des données liées aux transports et déplacements dans la métropole de Grenoble

Auteur/Author : Mouhameth Beye

L’objectif de ce mémoire est d’analyser l’historicité de l’ouverture des données publiques au niveau local précisément à la métropole de Grenoble. Il propose l’analyse de deux corpus relatifs à la mise à disposition de l’information publique locale : le magazine de la métropole de Grenoble de 1996 à 2015 et le portail « open data » de ladite métropole.

Ce présent travail se donnera pour mission de s’interroger sur la temporalité de cette pratique d’ouverture des données publiques matérialisées aujourd’hui par les portails du même nom.

Nous faisons l’hypothèse que l’ouverture des données publiques, au niveau local, constituerait un renouvellement de l’information service, pratique déjà existante historiquement dans les supports de communication des collectivités territoriales et que les transformations qu’elle apporte ne sont pas à la hauteur des discours qui l’accompagnent, faisant de lui une « révolution » dans la manière de gérer l’information publique locale.

Ce travail s’inscrit totalement dans les sciences de l’information et de la communication (SIC) dans la mesure où il questionne l’information publique, partie intégrante de la communication publique.

URL : https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-01373242