[sc-announce] How open is that data? -- Science Commons blog
Donna Wentworth
dwentworth at creativecommons.org
Mon Jul 21 12:12:42 EDT 2008
How open is that data?
July 21st, 2008<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/07/21/how-open-is-that-data/>by
dwentworth
Last week we shared the
news<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/07/14/melanie-dulong-de-rosnay-on-opening-access-to-science/>about
research Melanie
Delong de Rosnay <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/mdulongderosnay> has
been conducting on the
complexities<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/07/16/on-the-complexities-of-sharing-scientific-data/>of
opening access to scientific data. The research has now been published
over at Nature Precedings <http://precedings.nature.com/>, in the form of a
paper entitled, *Check Your Data Freedom: A Taxonomy to Assess Life Science
Database Openness <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2008.2083.1>*.
"Molecular biology data are subject to terms of use that vary widely between
databases and curating institutions," writes de Rosnay in the abstract.
"[This paper] builds upon research led by Science Commons demonstrating why
open data and the freedom to integrate facilitate innovation and how this
openness can be achieved. … Most terms of use for databases] are not
harmonized, [are] difficult to understand and impose controls that prevent
others from effectively reusing data."
To address the problem, the paper proposes a "checklist for data openness…to
assist database curators who wish to make their data more open to make sure
they do so."
That's not all. Our outstanding research assistant, recent MIT graduate Shirley
Fung <http://shirleyfung.wordpress.com/about/> (SM '08), helped de Rosnay
with the project and has published a website
<http://shirleyfung.com/mbdb/>that lets anyone explore and evaluate
the legal and technical openness of
the sample set of scientific databases. Here's a look the home page:
Find Open Data <http://shirleyfung.com/mbdb/filter.php?by=compliant>
Browse a list of databases compliant with the Science Commons Open Access
Data Protocol<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/07/21/projects/publishing/open-access-data-protocol/>
Browse Policies <http://shirleyfung.com/mbdb/filter.php?by=browse>
View databases categorized by their technical and legal accessibility
regimes
Classified Databases <http://shirleyfung.com/mbdb/filter.php?by=alltab>
Find all the databases classified by the project. You also may want to use
the "Browse Policies"
<http://shirleyfung.com/mbdb/filter.php?by=browse>section for a
specific kinds of databases.
Submit Policy <http://shirleyfung.com/mbdb/submit.php>
Use the questionnaire to submit a database policy to our system.
If you have questions about the project, please let us
know<science at creativecommons.org>
.
................
Donna Wentworth
Communications Specialist
Science Commons
http://sciencecommons.org
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