Presentation by Simon Coles on issues of partnerships, quality and trust in data publishing given at the Now and Future of Data Publishing Symposium, 22 May 2013, Oxford, UK

1. Partnerships,
Quality & Trust
Simon Coles
@colessj
22nd May 2013
These are my opinions and don‟t reflect those of my employer, etc…

2. What do we mean?
• Partnerships
– are links between disparate networks of individuals, bodies or
organisations. To define a partnership, we could
• characterise individuals, e.g. “managers”, “champions” (self-
identified) or “heroes” (peer-identified) who embody the links
• define the nature of transactions/interactions between bodies.
• Quality
– is a subjective, but representational, measure, i.e., people say that
something is "high" quality and that "high" quality is better than "low"
quality.
– is a measure of the degree of fulfilment of a specification, i.e. how well
a retrospective description (enactment) of an entity corresponds to
the original prospective description (plan)
• Trust
– is a tacit agreement between a trustor and a trustee, where the trustor
believes that the trustee will, or has, performed a series of actions.

3. • Quality and trust are deeply related (through provenance)
• Trust (and an element of quality) can be baked into a system
via the concepts of prospective and retrospective provenance
• The 7 W‟s [Goble 2002]
– Who, What, Where, Why, When, Which, & (W)How
• The Why aspect is usually ignored 
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
But, in practice, there is.” (Yogi Berra?)
3

4. Methodology (Planned Method)
• The “plan” is modelled
as a directed graph
• Two node types:
– Plan Stage
description of an
activity that will be
enacted
– Plan Object
description of an
artefact that will be
realised
4

5. Enactment (of a Methodology)
• Each “run” (of a plan)
is modelled as a directed
graph
• Two node types:
– Stage
description of an activity
that has been enacted
– Object
description of an artefact
that has been realised
5

6. Provenance
• Prospective
– The plan describes a
scientific experiment
that will be enacted
• Retrospective
– The run describes a
scientific experiment
that has been enacted
– Every „run thing‟ is
linked to exactly one
„plan thing‟ 6

7. Partnerships:
Transactions and Stakeholders
Societal demand for research to achieve economic and social progress (macro-level).
Exchange amongst researchers to expand knowledge boundaries (micro-level).

8. The Web and Partnerships:
Disintermediation
• Can occur when an a third party intervenes in a transaction
between a supplier and consumer (partnership).
• The Web has had a disruptive effect on many traditional
transactions, where the affordances of the Web satisfy the
role of the intermediary.
• E.g. Travel agents, insurance brokers, traditional retail
• Level of disruption seen in these markets, not visible in
academic publishing...
• (in many cases full disintermediation does not occur, but
the intermediary layer becomes much thinner)

9. Disintermediation in Research
• Extent to which disintermediation can take place is dependent on the Web‟s
ability to fulfil the roles originally conducted by the intermediaries.
and to what extent the stakeholders are prepared for change...
• E.g. Macro level disintermediation: Remove the research councils.
– Would require major policy shift
– Would require transparency to more efficiently allocate funds.
• E.g. Micro level disintermediation: Remove the journal publishers.
– Researchers distribute research amongst themselves
– Researchers‟ reputations emerge from community
– Requires significant incentives to change culture and may introduce
problems concerning trust (provenance may be a solution)
• In many instances full disintermediation is not desirable - “apomediation”
(mediating from afar) may allow stakeholders to add value without being in
the middle of the transaction.
• Micro level disintermediation may ease disintermediation on the macro level.

10. A disintermediated world