Libraries to observe Open Access Week with virtual panel discussion Oct. 24; Penn State, October 11, 2023

  Penn State; Libraries to observe Open Access Week with virtual panel discussion Oct. 24

"Penn State University Libraries will participate in the 16th annual global observance of Open Access Week with a virtual panel discussion at noon on Oct. 24. Panelists will discuss this year's theme, “Community Over Commercialization,” in the context of University Libraries initiatives that support research and teaching. The session is free and will be held virtually on Zoom; registration is required in order to attend.

The theme “encourages a candid conversation about which approaches to open scholarship prioritize the best interests of the public and the academic community — and which do not,” according to the website description.

The panelists are Libraries employees who work on open initiatives including open access, open publishing, open data, open metadata, open educational resources and open source software:

• Jeff Edmunds, digital access coordinator, Cataloging and Metadata Services
• Ana Enriquez, interim head, Scholarly Communications and Copyright
• Andrew Gearhart, applications developer, Libraries Strategic Technologies
• Ally Laird, open publishing program coordinator, Research Informatics and Publishing
• Elizabeth Nelson, reference and instruction librarian, Lehigh Valley Campus Library, Penn State Lehigh Valley
• Briana Wham, Data Learning Center manager/research data management librarian — STEM, Research Informatics and Publishing"

Massive open index of scholarly papers launches; Nature, January 24, 2022

 Dalmeet Singh Chawla , Nature; Massive open index of scholarly papers launches

"An ambitious free index of more than 200 million scientific documents that catalogues publication sources, author information and research topics, has been launched.

The index, called OpenAlex after the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt, also aims to chart connections between these data points to create a comprehensive, interlinked database of the global research system, say its founders. The database, which launched on 3 January, is a replacement for Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG), a free alternative to subscription-based platforms such as Scopus, Dimensions and Web of Science that was discontinued at the end of 2021."

Montana seeks balancing act with wildlife location data, hunting ethics; Independent Record, February 6, 2020

Tom Kuglin, Independent Record; Montana seeks balancing act with wildlife location data, hunting ethics


"While GPS collars are invaluable to researchers and wildlife managers, the data they produce are the subject of debate about who should have access to the information and why. Some hunters have requested and received the exact latitude and longitude of collared animals, and that has conservation groups and lawmakers concerned about violating the edict of fair chase hunting or the potential to monetize the data."

NNS Spotlight: Nonprofit uses data research to spur change in communities; Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS), November 6, 2019

Caroline White, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS); NNS Spotlight: Nonprofit uses data research to spur change in communities

"Numbers can tell only part of a story.

They mean nothing without context.

And that’s where Data You Can Use steps in. The nonprofit works to provide useful local data so organizations can create change on a community level.

“In some of these neighborhoods, people have a fear of research because they’ve always been the subject, but they never see the results. That can be very damaging,” said Katie Pritchard, executive director and president of Data You Can Use. “If you’re only telling one part of the story, it doesn’t help anyone.”...

“We wanted to find a better way to measure the impact of what we do,” [Barb] Wesson [the outcomes manager] said. “One of the things Data You Can Use does really well that I don’t do at all is qualitative data analysis, and that’s what we needed.”"

Once upon a time in Silicon Valley: How Facebook's open-data nirvana fell apart; NBC News, April 19, 2019

David Ingram and Jason Abbruzzese, NBC News; Once upon a time in Silicon Valley: How Facebook's open-data nirvana fell apart

"Facebook’s missteps have raised awareness about the possible abuse of technology, and created momentum for digital privacy laws in Congress and in state legislatures.

“The surreptitious sharing with third parties because of some ‘gotcha’ in the terms of service is always going to upset people because it seems unfair,” said Michelle Richardson, director of the data and privacy project at the Center for Democracy & Technology.

After the past two years, she said, “you can just see the lightbulb going off over the public’s head.”"

Open data needs ethical, efficient management; University of Cape Town News, March 6, 2019

Helen Swingler, University of Cape Town News; Open data needs ethical, efficient management

"Ethics in data management

Niklas Zimmer, manager of digital services at UCT Libraries, said that ethical management of data is key. Several of the lightning presentations made at the event underscored this.

UCT Gender Health and Justice Research Unit (GHJRU) research officer Kristen Daskilewicz cited an important example when she said the use of open data is not always appropriate for research where there are heightened safety concerns.

Her example described a collaborative two-year cross-sectional research project on LGBTI health, safety and other rights that the unit undertook on behalf of the Southern and Eastern Africa Research Collective on Health (SEARCH). SEARCH is a collective of 23 civil society organisations in nine countries.

The project participants had to be “very careful” with data collection and dissemination in the study countries, particularly those where aspects of same-sex relationships have been criminalised. There were concerns about protecting the survey participants and the unit’s civil society partners, who were the data collectors."

Harvard Converts Millions of Legal Documents into Open Data; Government Technology, November 2, 2018

Theo Douglas, Government Technology; Harvard Converts Millions of Legal Documents into Open Data

[Kip Currier: Discovered the recent launch of this impressive Harvard University-anchored Caselaw Access Project, while updating a lecture for next week on Open Data.

The free site provides access to highly technical data, full text cases, and even "quirky" but fascinating legal info...like the site's Gallery, highlighting instances in which "witchcraft" is mentioned in legal cases throughout the U.S.

Check out this new site...and spread the word about it!] 


"A new free website spearheaded by the Library Innovation Lab at the Harvard Law School makes available nearly 6.5 million state and federal cases dating from the 1600s to earlier this year, in an initiative that could alter and inform the future availability of similar areas of public-sector big data.

Led by the Lab, which was founded in 2010 as an arena for experimentation and exploration into expanding the role of libraries in the online era, the Caselaw Access Project went live Oct. 29 after five years of discussions, planning and digitization of roughly 100,000 pages per day over two years.

The effort was inspired by the Google Books Project; the Free Law Project, a California 501(c)(3) that provides free, public online access to primary legal sources, including so-called “slip opinions,” or early but nearly final versions of legal opinions; and the Legal Information Institute, a nonprofit service of Cornell University that provides free online access to key legal materials."

Should Open Access And Open Data Come With Open Ethics?; Forbes, July 20, 2017

Kalev Leetaru, Forbes; Should Open Access And Open Data Come With Open Ethics?

"In the end, the academic community must decide if “openness” and “transparency” apply only to the final outputs of our scholarly institutions, with individual researchers, many from fields without histories of ethical prereview, are exclusively empowered to decide what constitutes ethical and moral conduct and just how much privacy should be permitted in our digital society, or if we should add “open ethics” to our focus on open access and open data and open universities up to public discourse on just what the future of “big data” research should look like."

I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations; Guardian, March 28, 2017

Victoria Hermann, Guardian; 

I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations

"The consequences of vanishing citations, however, pose a far more serious consequence than website updates. Each defunct page is an effort by the Trump administration to deliberately undermine our ability to make good policy decisions by limiting access to scientific evidence.

We’ve seen this type of data strangling before.

Just three years ago, Arctic researchers witnessed another world leader remove thousands of scientific documents from the public domain. In 2014, then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper closed 11 department of fisheries and oceans regional libraries, including the only Arctic center. Hundreds of reports and studies containing well over a century of research were destroyed in that process – a historic loss from which we still have not recovered. 

These back-to-back data deletions come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. Just this week, it was reported that the Arctic’s winter sea ice dropped to its lowest level in recorded history. The impacts of a warming, ice-free Arctic are already clear: a decline in habitat for polar bears and other Arctic animals; increases in coastal erosion that force Alaskans to abandon their homes; and the opening up of shipping routes with unpredictable conditions and hazardous icebergs. 

In a remote region where data is already scarce, we need publicly available government guidance and records now more than ever before. It is hard enough for modern Arctic researchers to perform experiments and collect data to fill the gaps left by historic scientific expeditions. While working in one of the most physically demanding environments on the planet, we don’t have time to fill new data gaps created by political malice."

Peer-review activists push psychology journals towards open data; Nature, March 1, 2017

Gautam Naik, Nature; 

Peer-review activists push psychology journals towards open data

"An editor on the board of a journal published by the prestigious American Psychological Association (APA) has been asked to resign in a controversy over data sharing in peer review.

Gert Storms — who says he won’t step down — is one of a few hundred scientists who have vowed that, from the start of this year, they will begin rejecting papers if authors won’t publicly share the underlying data, or explain why they can’t.

The idea, called the Peer Reviewers’ Openness Initiative, was launched by psychologists hoping to increase transparency in a field beset by reports of fraud and dubious research practices. And the APA, which does not ask that data be made available to peer reviewers or shared openly online, seems set to become an early testing ground for the initiative’s influence. With Storms’ situation still unresolved, the society’s council of editors will discuss whether it should change its policies at a meeting in late March."

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 22, 2017

Tracie Mauriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency

"If you wanted to know who visited the White House, how much the president’s secretary is paid, or which state has the most federally funded teaching positions, the information was just a few clicks away. With a bit more technical knowledge, you could explore public data sets to analyze the president’s budget, or look for trends in government spending.

No more.

Dozens of data sets disappeared last week from Open.WhiteHouse.gov, a website the Obama administration created to promote government transparency.

Visitors to the website now and find a message saying “check back for new data.” But it isn’t clear when any new data will be posted, and government watchdogs aren’t confident that it will ever happen.

“We are working to open up the new sites,” White House press aide Helen Ferre emailed in response to questions. She did not respond to follow-up questions about the content of the “new sites,” whether they will include visitor logs, why data sets were removed, and when aides will post new information...

The data the Obama administration provided hasn’t been deleted. Rather it’s been preserved by the National Archives in accordance with a law that prohibits federal data from being destroyed. Find it at https://open.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/...

The data is no longer in a user-friendly format. Users have to have the technical knowledge to unpack zipfiles and must have software that can handle large files with millions of rows of data."

‘All of our federal data assets are currently at risk’ — here’s how people are trying to protect them; FedScoop, February 19, 2017

Samantha Ehlinger, FedScoop; 

‘All of our federal data assets are currently at risk’ — here’s how people are trying to protect them

"A group of coders, librarians, scientists, storytellers and others passionate about data came together at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., this weekend to preserve federal data that some worry could disappear under different Trump administration priorities. The goal of the DataRescueDC event: store federal climate and environmental data that is “vulnerable under an administration that denies the fact of ongoing climate change.”

But while fear of losing federal scientific data during the Trump administration has galvanized work across the country to preserve reputable copies of key data, during Saturday’s events experts involved in the project said that it also highlights the need for creating an official infrastructure for safeguarding federal data.

“We talk a lot in this country about our failing infrastructure, and it’s really obvious when drinking water supplies are dangerous to the people who drink them. And it’s really obvious when a bridge collapses over the Mississippi river. But what was not really obvious, I think, until this juncture that we are now at is how incredible vulnerable our infrastructure for federal data is. Like, there isn’t one really. It’s totally just absent in many — in very powerful ways,” said Bethany Wiggin, founding director of the University of Pennsylvania Program in Environmental Humanities, which is facilitating Data Refuge."

Open Science: Beyond Open Access webinar; Library Journal, February 21, 2017

Library Journal; Open Science: Beyond Open Access webinar

"Open Science: Beyond Open Access

Presented by: Dove Press & Library Journal

Event Date & Time: Tuesday, February 21st, 2017, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM ET / 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM PT

Collaboration can be a major driver for success. When data is shared among researchers, analysts and stakeholders, the opportunities for innovation and development increase exponentially, particularly in the medical and science fields. To be most effective, the Open Science framework demands more than simply sharing data–it requires dedication, transparency and responsible publishing.

Join this webcast to learn from our panel of experts as they discuss the challenges and benefits of Open Science in the context of global health and medical concerns. They will explain how the disruptive concept of Open Data can reshape and improve the nature of research and results.

Panelists

• Dr. Eric Little, VP of Data Science, OSTHUS
• Dr. Robin Bloor, Chief Analyst, The Bloor Group
• Andrew Johnson, Research Data Librarian/Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder

Moderator

• Rebecca Jozwiak, Editorial & Research Director, The Bloor Group"

Will open data survive Trump?; InfoWorld, 1/16/17

Eric Knorr, InfoWorld; 

Will open data survive Trump?

"The incredible quantity of data collected across the federal government is a national treasure. Few other countries on earth apply the same energy, funding, and rigor to assembling such extensive stores. Even if ordinary citizens don't go to Data.gov for entertainment, both policymakers and business leaders need objective data to make sound decisions.

Before joining the Sunlight Foundation, Howard worked at O’Reilly Media, starting there a few years after Tim O’Reilly convened a group of open government advocates to develop the eight principles of open government data in 2007. Howard says the idea of open data really goes back to the Constitution, which stipulates an "Enumeration" (aka, census) be held to apportion Congressional seats -- an indication that "open data is in the DNA of the USA." Even further, open data harkens to the original Enlightenment idea that reason based on fact should govern human action.

We'll see how that quaint notion survives the postfact era. Meanwhile, consider contributing to the Sunlight Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

More New Ways to Explore Patent Data; Blog by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee, Director's Forum Blog, 1/12/17

Michelle K. Lee, Blog by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee, Director's Forum Blog; More New Ways to Explore Patent Data

"Making patent data accessible to the public has been a cornerstone of this agency’s policy since its inception. I’m pleased to announce yet another step we’ve taken at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to make such data even easier for the public to understand and use, namely the addition of new features to our patent data visualization and analysis tool, PatentsView. First launched in 2014, PatentsView provides the public a variety of ways to interactively engage, through a web-based platform, the highest-quality patent data available. The underlying database connects 40 years’ worth of information about inventors, their organizations, and their locations in unprecedented ways. PatentsView is a key component of our open data efforts to improve the accessibility, usability, and transparency of U.S. patent data...

You could argue that the innovations documented in our records may very well, collectively, constitute the world’s largest repository of scientific and technological knowledge. But the larger a data set, the more challenging it is to find useful information or trends or, put another way, to separate the signal from the noise. This collaborative tool, developed by the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Economist in conjunction with the American Institutes for Research, New York University, the University of California at Berkeley, Twin Arch Technologies, and Periscopic, aims to make that sorting and separation possible. The shared public and private effort in creating and improving the platform is symbolized in the “.org” domain of http://www.PatentsView.org.

By providing new tools and data to the public, PatentsView demonstrates this agency’s continuing commitment to open data, open government, and evidence-based policymaking."

Pennsylvania wades into open data; GCN, 8/26/16

Matt Leonard, GCN; Pennsylvania wades into open data:

"The data currently available on OpenDataPA supports Gov. Tom Wolf’s three governing objectives -- education, employment and government services -- includes prison population numbers, school performance profiles and summary information on well inspections. The state also plans to release datasets from other state agencies on the site...

The administration’s main goals for releasing this data is three-fold: accountability, modernization and innovation. The portal will allow citizens to keep track of government projects, find this information in one place and use if to “make data-driven decisions.”"

There’s No Such Thing as Innocuous Personal Data; Slate, 8/8/16

Elizabeth Weingarten, Slate; There’s No Such Thing as Innocuous Personal Data:

"The way you walk can be as unique as your fingerprint; a couple of studies show that gait can help verify the identity of smartphone users. And gait can also predict whether someone is at risk for dementia. Seemingly useless pieces of data may let experts deduce or predict certain behaviors or conditions now, but the big insights will come in the next few years, when companies and consumers are able to view a tapestry of different individual data points and contrast them with data across the entire population. That’s when, according to a recent report from Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, we’ll be able to “gain deep insight into human emotional experiences.”

But it’s the data that you’re creating now that will fuel those insights. Far from meaningless, it’s the foundation of what you (and everyone else) may be able to learn about your future self."

Zika Data From the Lab, and Right to the Web; New York Times, 7/18/16

Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times; Zika Data From the Lab, and Right to the Web:

"Dr. O’Connor’s decision was the most radical manifestation of a trend already underway. In early February, more than 30 of the most prominent academic journals, research institutions and research funders signed a “Statement on Data Sharing in Public Health Emergencies” in which the journals agreed to make all articles about the Zika virus available free instead of charging their subscription fees, which can be hundreds of dollars.

The journals also agreed to consider articles that had first been posted for comment on public forums like bioRxiv, which is hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. The funders agreed to make everyone receiving their money share data as widely as possible...

“I never planned to be an evangelist,” he said. “I was happy toiling in anonymity, so this is a surreal experience. We all grew up in the same system: You do a study, you submit it to a journal, and your place in the hierarchy depends on the quality of the journal it appears in.”

“If it’s all you’ve known, you assume it’s the right way. But if you’ve got data that can contribute to the public health response during an epidemic — is it really yours to hang onto?”"

Public info, now: As county and city improve, the state stays lousy; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/6/16

Editorial Board, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Public info, now: As county and city improve, the state stays lousy:

"County officials in recent days have rolled out new online tools to make certain types of public information more accessible.

Controller Chelsa Wagner on Thursday debuted alleghenycounty.opengov.com, which features graphs, charts and sortable data about spending, vendors, employees, salaries and benefits. She also introduced allegheny.openbookportal.com, providing instant access to contracts with vendors...

Local governments are getting better at providing basic financial and vendor information to the public, and some officials, such as city Controller Michael Lamb, take pride in providing easy access to public information...

Across the state, however, access to public documents is uneven, and obtaining anything beyond routine documents, such as annual budgets, often involves a cumbersome right-to-know process in which the government agency drags its feet and attempts to keep secret anything potentially embarrassing or controversial. Incremental progress on openness should be applauded, but it is important to remember that the larger battle is far from won."

The dark side of Guardian comments; Guardian, 4/12/16

Becky Gardiner, Mahana Mansfield, Ian Anderson, Josh Holder, Daan Louter and Monica Ulmanu, Guardian; The dark side of Guardian comments:

"Comments allow readers to respond to an article instantly, asking questions, pointing out errors, giving new leads. At their best, comment threads are thoughtful, enlightening, funny: online communities where readers interact with journalists and others in ways that enrich the Guardian’s journalism.

But at their worst, they are something else entirely.

The Guardian was not the only news site to turn comments on, nor has it been the only one to find that some of what is written “below the line” is crude, bigoted or just vile. On all news sites where comments appear, too often things are said to journalists and other readers that would be unimaginable face to face – the Guardian is no exception.

New research into our own comment threads provides the first quantitative evidence for what female journalists have long suspected: that articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article is about.

Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men...

At the Guardian, we felt it was high time to examine the problem rather than turn away.

We decided to treat the 70m comments that have been left on the Guardian – and in particular the comments that have been blocked by our moderators – as a huge data set to be explored rather than a problem to be brushed under the carpet.

This is what we discovered."