Open Data: How, why, and is there any point?

Open Data: What can we do? What should we do?

Open Data: What can we do? What should we do? poin t? a ny th ere nd is A

About me.

I live in Bath http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/andypowe11/3915450391

I work at RAL

I work for STFC...

But The opinions expressed in this talk are the personal views of the speaker given as a private citizen and should not unders any circumstances be taken of as indicative of STFC, RCUK, or government policy or of any discussions within these organizations of future policy....

I get up in the morning http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/andypowe11/3251538402

...and catch a train http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mattbuck007/3710451826

...and a bus

I work on... Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons Succinate_Dehydrogenase_1YQ3_and_Membrane.png MGMT BDNA_1T38.png

...and get to do cool stuff

Mixture of small-lab work...

...and big facility experiments

Lots of reading... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/loty/326761635

...meetings... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/amagill/38961674

...too much travel... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/22819720@N02/2306780847

...which leads to too much of this

Why?

Why do I do it?

Why do they pay?

Why do they pay? http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mararie/3313582639/ CC-BY-SA

Why do they pay? w e http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mararie/3313582639/ CC-BY-SA

A (naive) history

Before 1945 Wellcome Images

1939-45

http://ﬂickr.com/photos/14405058@N08/2618721930 Wikimedia Commons Kotzebue_AFS_Long_Range_Radar.jpg

Science won the war

...therefore...

Science needs funding

...but the war ended sixty years ago...

But that’s ok

We have new wars.

Clearly it is a lot more complicated than that http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/storm-crypt/2078500698/

But we seem focused on threats

We believe our own propaganda... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ansik/3844530655

...leading to http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/stuartpilbrow/3345896050 CC-BY-SA

So what’s the answer? http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mrs_logic/3320303076

I don’t really know... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/valeriebb/2248744703

...but here are some ideas http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ful1to/3783198574

1. The personal

Be with yourself http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/danielle_scott/3690339561

My aim is to...

Maximise the (positive) impact I have on the world http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/amardilo/3231427553 CC-BY

...through my work or through enabling others.

I work mainly on technique development and enabling technologies

I aim to maximise the ability of people to (re-)use my work

The web makes publishing easy

...data, documents, media...

Publishing (broadcasting) is easy

...sharing is harder. http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/missrogue/107787363

2. The social (and technical)

Value of the network depends on connections Bollen J, Van de Sompel H, Hagberg A, Bettencourt L, Chute R, et al. (2009) Clickstream Data Yields High- Resolution Maps of Science. PLoS ONE 4(3): e4803. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004803

“I propose the seeming paradox that in science, private property is established by having its substance freely given to others who might want to make use of it.” Merton (1988) ISIS 79:606

Interoperability is the key... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/sﬂlaw/222795669

Technical interoperability... ...formats, vocabularies http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jeffsand/3871415191

Legal interoperability... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/spunter/3239363956

Technical Legal interop. interop. Process interoperability

Systems need to work with existing process

A short story...

MyTea project: A fully semantic laboratory record for chemistry http://mytea.org.uk/

But not molecular biology

General MyTea Speciﬁc Unstructured Structured

General ? MyTea Speciﬁc Unstructured Structured

General Blogs ? MyTea Speciﬁc Unstructured Structured

A recipe for chaos? http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/benuski/3452291541

Yes to start with...

But then something interesting happened...

Templates Metadata

Self assembling ontology? Sequence ontology: SO:0000696 “oligo” SO:0000155 “plasmid” ...but... SO:0000006 “PCR product” or SO:0000412 “rest. fragment”?

Capture first... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/furtwangl/3851841424

Dionaea muscipula Musca domestica chomped on ...then add structure

Map our process onto agreed vocabularies

...when we write the paper http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/tnarik/366393127

Machines do structure http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/yeowatzup/2463225297

....humans tell stories

Tools that capture structure as we choose the pieces for our narrative

We can make it easy to share http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/doubledareya/2443303399

...but will we want to share? http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/66164549@N00/2162663143

Not according to this paper...

We need agreed goals... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/frli/3586354961

3. The political

Why do we fund science? http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mararie/3313582639/ CC-BY-SA

If we don’t have answers... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mattymatt/3017263513

...then at least...

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jamescridland/3947254236

Optimise for.... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/tomarthur/3593729997

....not this http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/vrogy/514733529

Less of this... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ehnmark/463965443

...more of this http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/chadmiller/2740551034

...and a lot less of this http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/tammra/283690669/

More open research.

An opportunity to engage... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/davidcjones/1422043515

Hundreds of thousands...

...but not if data is locked away http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/andypowe11/3759152528

More open research.

Measure ourselves... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3209939998

...and then do something about it http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/silas216/149401489

More. Open. Research.

But fit the existing processes... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/38485387@N02/3581504276

Open Data: What can we do? What should we do?

What can we do?

Technically able to share http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/yourdon/3088582622

What should we do?

Tools for capturing... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pandawan/3950755957

And is there any point?

Cameron.Neylon@stfc.ac.uk http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen http://slideshare.net/cameronneylon Twitter: @cameronneylon Friendfeed: cameronneylon Thanks to: Sciencetwists, Friendfeeders, and the wider online community for ideas, criticism, and conversations. Deepak Singh, Larry Lessig, Andy Powell, and John Wilbanks for presentation inspiration. Flickr (and in particular @andypowe11) for images

Open Data: How, why, and is there any point?

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