Some responses to John Wood’s talk on e-science infrastructure at AHM2007. Continue reading “Distributed data”
Through a PRISM darkly
I don’t really want to add anything more to what has been said in many places (and has been rounded up well by Bora Zivkovic on Blog Around the Clock, see also Peter Suber for the definitive critique, also updates here and here). However there is a public relations issue here for the open science movement in general that I think hasn’t come up yet.
PRISM is an organisation with a specific message designed by PR people which is essentially that ‘Mandating Open Access for government funded science undermines the traditional model of peer review’. We know this is demonstrably false in respect of both Open Access scientific journals and more generally of making papers from other journals available after a certain delay. It is however conceivable, for someone with a particularly twisted mindset, to construe the actions of some members of the ‘Open Science Community’ as being intended to undermine peer review. We think of providing raw data online or using blogs, Wikis, pre-print archives or whatever other means to discuss science as an exciting way to supplement the peer reviewed literature. PRISM, and other like-minded groups, will attempt to link Open Access and Open Science together so as to represent an attempt by ‘those people’ to undermine peer review.
What is important is control of the language. PRISM has focussed on the term ‘Open Access’. We must draw a sharp distinction between Open Access and ‘Open Science’ (or ‘Open Research‘ which may be a better term). The key is that while those of us who believe in Open Research are largely in favour of Open Access literature, publishing in the Open Access literature does not imply any commitment to Open Research. Indeed it doesn’t even imply a commitment to providing the raw data that supports a publication. It is purely and simple a commitment to provide specific peer reviewed research literature in a freely accessible form which can be freely re-used and re-mixed.
We need some simple messages of our own. Here are some suggested ideas;
‘Open Access literature provides public access to publicly funded research’
‘Publically supported research should be reported in publically accessible literature’
‘How many times should a citizen have to pay to see a report on research supported by their tax dollars?’
‘Open Access literature improves the quality of peer review’
Emphasis here is on ‘public’ and ‘literature’ rather than ‘government’ and ‘results’ or ‘science’
I think there is also a need for some definitions that the ‘Open Research Community’ feels able to sign up to. Jean-Claude Bradley and Bertalan Mesko are running a session in Second Life on Nature Island next Tuesday (1600 UTC) which will include a discussion of definitions (see here for details and again the link to Bill Hooker’s good discussion of terminology). I probably won’t be able to attend but would encourage people to participate in whatever form possible so as to take this forward.
A great example of ‘fun’
I wrote the other day about the idea of fun being a motivating factor to taking up open notebook science. Sometimes something is just cool and you want to share it. Then along comes a great example.
Via petermr’s blog:
At ‘Life of a Lab Rat‘:
This has got to be in the running for the coolest cloning experiment ever.
Last Tuesday a grad student in the reciprocal space cadet lab, let’s call him Fu Manchu, asked me if I had any GFP. ‘GFP’ expands to ‘green fluorescent protein’……[]
As petermr says this is just very cool. The molecular biology is fairly conventional. But that’s not the point. The point is that Black Knight did a fun experiment and felt it was worth sharing with the world. We might argue that there isn’t enough methodological detail to tell us exactly what was done here but that’s a minor quibble. The important thing is that it was fun and its out there!
Incidentally, I am writing this in the lab while waiting for PCR primers to melt so I can set up some PCR reactions (here if you want to look – though you may not be able to access this at the moment, still need to get this one to public access). I am beginning to think that one of the main issues of open notebook science for biochemistry/molecular biology may be the difficulty in using a track pad with nitrile gloves on!
Open (adjective)
Open [oh-puhn ] (adjective) not closed…having no means of closing or barring…relatively free of obstruction…without restrictions as to who may participate…undecided; unsettled… (from Dictionary.com)
There is a great deal of confusion out there as to what ‘Open’ means, especially in science. The definitions above seem particularly apposite ‘…relatively free of obstruction…’. Certainly undecided or unsettled seems appropriate in some cases. The claims of a journal to be ‘Open Access’ can set off a barrage of comment in the blogosphere. Whether this makes any difference to the journal is unclear but definitions are clearly important. If my aim here is talk about Open Science then it is sensible to be clear what I mean.
So the following stand as definitions until they need to be changed;
Open Access (of journals, data, or anything else really): Means freely available and accesible to use, re-use, re-distribute, re-mix subject only to a requirement to attribute the work. Essentially as described in the Berlin and Bethesda declarations. Well summarised by Chris Surridge on his blog at PLoS ONE.
Freely accesible: On the web, indexed by search engines, in a useable format, with no requirement to pay for access and no exclusion of any potential users (except perhaps for antisocial behaviour).
Open Notebook Science: This is Jean-Claude Bradley‘s term which I think encompasses much of what I am interested in doing and has been pretty clearly defined (see here and here). To summarise this means that every experiment that is done and every piece of data that is collected is placed online in a freely accessible repository in a timely manner. I would add to this something which I don’t think is explicit in previous definitions but I think is implicit in the way his group works and make their data available. That is that there must be space for interaction, comments, and questions from the outside world.
Open Science is really too woolly a term to mean anything much but it encompasses the movement that is working towards more of the above throughout the science community. Its a good phrase, it captures the imagination, is evocative, and memorable. Its just too big to be pinned down. But its a big set of ideas, so let’s see where it leads us.