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?

And is there an

y point?

About me.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andypowe11/3915450391

I live in Bath

I work at RAL

I work for STFC...

ButThe 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....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andypowe11/3251538402

I get up in the morning

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattbuck007/3710451826

...and catch a train

...and a bus

Wikimedia Commons Succinate_Dehydrogenase_1YQ3_and_Membrane.png

Wikimedia CommonsMGMT BDNA_1T38.png

I work on...

...and get to do cool stuff

Mixture of small-lab work...

...and big facility experiments

http://www.flickr.com/photos/loty/326761635

Lots of reading...

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

...meetings...

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

...too much travel...

...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?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mararie/3313582639/ CC-BY-SA

we

A (naive) history

Wellcome Images

Before 1945

1939-45

http://flickr.com/photos/14405058@N08/2618721930

Wikimedia CommonsKotzebue_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

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

...leading to

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 ideashttp://www.flickr.com/photos/ful1to/3783198574

1. The personal

Be

with yourselfhttp://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

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfllaw/222795669

Interoperability is the key...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffsand/3871415191

Technical interoperability...

...formats, vocabularies

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

Legal interoperability...

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

Legal interoperability...

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

Legal interoperability...

Technical interop.

Legal interop.

Process interoperability

Systems need to work with existing process

A short story...

MyTea project:A fully semantic laboratory recordfor chemistry

http://mytea.org.uk/

But not molecular biology

StructuredUnstructured

General

SpecificMyTea

StructuredUnstructured

General

SpecificMyTea

?

StructuredUnstructured

General

SpecificMyTea

Blogs

?

A recipe for chaos?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benuski/3452291541

Yes to start with...

But then something interesting happened...

Templates Metadata

Sequence ontology:SO:0000696 “oligo”SO:0000155 “plasmid”

...but...

SO:0000006 “PCR product”or

SO:0000412 “rest. fragment”?

Self assembling ontology?

Capture first...

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

...then add structure

Dionaea muscipula Musca domesticachomped on

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 sharehttp://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

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattymatt/3017263513

If we don’t have answers...

...then at least...

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

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

Optimise for....

....not this

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vrogy/514733529

Less of this...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ehnmark/463965443

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chadmiller/2740551034

...more of this

...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 somethingabout 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?

<insert answer here>

[email protected]://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopenhttp://slideshare.net/cameronneylonTwitter: @cameronneylonFriendfeed: 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