In scientific communication, we observe a complex interaction of several stakeholder groups, each of which have distinct interests, strategies and approaches for Open Access and Open Data. The German government initiated a “Commission for the Future of the Information Infrastructure” (KII) in Germany. In this commission, most of the stakeholders are working together in order to design a future scenario for the supply of scientific information. The KII’s evaluation and recommendations for Open Access as well as research data will be particularly highly recognized and will significantly influence Open Access and Open Data developments in Germany.
I will outline the current situation in Germany – players and their interactions in terms of Open Access and Open Data – and present two initiatives and their work in detail. One of them, the KII process, will show the official site, the other one will show the grassroots site of the story.
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Anita Eppelin: Open Access and Open Data in Germany: current political developments and grassroots approaches
1. Open Access and Open Data in Germany: current political developments vs. grassroots approaches Anita Eppelin, German National Library of Medicine Open Access – Open Data Conference Cologne, 13th Dec 2010
31. “ It is relatively easy to build a raft to float across a wide river. […] To build a permanent bridge [it] requires the output of industries, the work of many specialists. […] It is time to begin building massive data bridges. […] Perhaps the real challenge will be convincing both the community and its leaders that it is doable today.“ http://www.frontiersin.org/Neuroscience/10.3389/neuro.01.016.2009/
34. Thank you for your attention! Anita Eppelin [email_address]
Editor's Notes
Thank you. I will talk about Open Access and Open Data in Germany – current political developments vs. grassroots approaches.
We have already heard and will hear a lot about the challenges of OA and data. In my talk, I will not go into detail regarding the Fourth Paradigm of data-intensive science, about scientific processes that are discipline-specific, about incentives and reputation management for researchers and their awareness about OA and data. I will not talk about supporting infrastructures either, like technical, editorial, curation, legal tasks, and the need for clear responsibilities in institutions Nor about business models and funding and Science-friendly copyright. All these issues are of course crucial for the discussion and will pop up from time to time during my talk.
But I will focus on the ecosystem of science itself, from the grassroots to the lofty height of politics.
As my title suspects, I will focus on the situation in Germany. Gesamtbild Skizzieren I will also have a clear focus on scientific data although there are overlaps with other fields like museums, archives, and government which are also relevant. After a few remarks on the general framework in Germany, I will give you an overview about the network of the players involved in Open Access and Open Data. (e.g. funders, scientists, public, publishers). I will then present two oppositional approaches in detail. First, on the official level, i will talk about a big discussion that is going on in Germany under the title „ Commission for the future of the information infrastructure” Then, on the grassroots level: I will point out some specifics with the help of some prototypical grassroot approaches.
Let me point out the main general Framework conditions for science: What‘s really special about germany is the paradigm of „Freedom of science“. Science is supposed to be autonomous from government. This has a strong effect especially on funders and their strategies. The government is anything but generous these days, we have a strong need to economise. We have a relatively strong copyright at the moment protecting the interests of publishers and creators and neglecting interests of the recipients. There is quite a heterogeneity in terms of funding and management strategies, this is mostly due to federalism. These But then, like anywhere else, we experience the Paradigm shift toward digital scientific communication and data-driven science.
The framework for science is also defined by various official commitments: The first bullet item is well-known to all of you: Budapest initiative, Bethesda Statement and Berlin declaration, the most recent and the one with the biggest impact In Germany, there is another Declaration with focus on a science-friendly copyright, the Göttingen Declaration on Copyright for Education and Research (2004) Then there are the funding bodies like DFG and ESF with their funding programs and criteria regarding publications and data In the last months, there is this discussion about scienfitic informaion infrastructure going on in Germany. I will come back to this specific process later.
As my title suspects, I will focus on the situation in Germany. Gesamtbild Skizzieren I will also have a clear focus on scientific data although there are overlaps with other fields like museums, archives, and government which are also relevant. After a few remarks on the general framework in Germany, I will give you an overview about the network of the players involved in Open Access and Open Data. (e.g. funders, scientists, public, publishers). I will then present two oppositional approaches in detail. First, on the official level, i will talk about a big discussion that is going on in Germany under the title „ Commission for the future of the information infrastructure” Then, on the grassroots level: I will point out some specifics with the help of some prototypical grassroot approaches.
Now, here you see the different players, Government: In Germany the government, the federal states, the ministries and in some cases combinations thereof Science administration German Research Foundation (DFG) Alliance of German Science Organisations, DINI (Positionspapiere, z.B. Forschungsdaten) Institutions: Research organisations & their member institutions German Rectors' Conference/Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK), universities Individual researchers The public, NGOs Media Publishing industry IT Industry All of them are more or less linked by cashflow, or are influenced by each other in other ways. Since some of these players are acting global, I will leave the focus on Germany from time to time Internationally: activities of some of those levels, e.g. administrative level (Knowledge exchange) and service institutions (DRIVER) Intl. Network stronger with disciplinary approaches (like PANGEA) than institutional
Activities: (all issues like data, copyright)
(mainly German Research Foundation, DFG) Funding of OA green (Networking) and gold projects (shifting of subscription to publishing funds), OA information platform on the web
umbrella
Large- and small scale
Museums, archives, Also relevant, (since esp. relevant for retrodigitization) archives/centers/networks, e.g. DataCite, World Data Centers Again: Large- and small-scale
Content contribution: Web 2.0/crowdsourcing: ResearchGate, OpenWetWare, Dataverse …
Motivation: data journalism There are already data available, but all from one (centralized) source Open Data Network/Open Knowledge Foundation: German branches of international/US/UK-driven initiatives Re-publica: mostly creating (still) no activities to set more data free
for digital publishing (at least with traditional publishers) I am aware that I am generalising here There are and have been for a long time publishers that have a stronger self-conception of serving science, who have embraced oa in an early stage. Also there have been a few early startups that turned out to be very successful (you know, the usual suspects). ( German Publishers and Booksellers Association )
(cloud or grid and computing) E.g. IBM Manyeyes, Google Knol/Refine, Microsoft, Apple Science, Amazon and many smaller companies, e.g. Atlas.ti … Plus a „cloud“ of many smaller enterprises
As my title suspects, I will focus on the situation in Germany. Gesamtbild Skizzieren I will also have a clear focus on scientific data although there are overlaps with other fields like museums, archives, and government which are also relevant. After a few remarks on the general framework in Germany, I will give you an overview about the network of the players involved in Open Access and Open Data. (e.g. funders, scientists, public, publishers). I will then present two oppositional approaches in detail. First, on the official level, i will talk about a big discussion that is going on in Germany under the title „ Commission for the future of the information infrastructure” Then, on the grassroots level: I will point out some specifics with the help of some prototypical grassroot approaches.
Es geht ums Geld, Verteilung Ihr dürft gerne was vorschlagen, ruhigstellungsanspruch
April 2011: government will debate concept Bears the chance to… Alliance; (HRK, MPG, DFG, WGL…),
This is what was proposed, now ist the government‘s turn. We can only wait and see. I personaly think that there no sensible alternative to this approach due to the heterogeneity of the German Landscape. Sooner or later the government had to bring the players to one table. For me, the problem with this method is that on the one hand, the players are experts in the field of information infratructure and can therefore make brillant suggestions, but on the other hand, at the end of the day they all want a slice of the cake.
Here again: more intl. focus Attention! Open Access to Research Data ≠ Open Data No clear boundaries grass-roots initiated idee deren Zeit gekommen ist vs. Grass-roots contributed „filled“ - in literature you will find the term in several meanings (climate, oceanography, Molekularbiolgie genomics, astronomy) Examples for failure: German Academic Publishers, Green road
Gegenüber peers aus der community I selected several subject-specific examples for Open data, even but mostly there is linking to publications
Best practice examples I am aware that not all of these approaches are really grassroots-driven in the first place, but there is a large community behind all of them contributing to the critical mass of information that lead to their success. As we all know, mashups of with geodata are always great for data visualization Sites where data are born Sites where data are merged and utilized and new data are born 14 VOs worldwide
More or less Real-time map of the positions of research vessels in the world‘s oceans World data center, publishing network
There are massive amounts of survey data and a couple of large-scale projects have been done to handle these data and make them available. Aim: international standardization, funded by the EU and driven by a couple of European social science data archives. The website is a hub directing the user to single data sets or data archives. For data submission, one has to go to the individual archives Close International Federation of Data Organisations (IFDO)
For EXAMPLE the World atlas of language structures, The Intercontinental Dictionary Series There is A Multilingual Repository of Annotated Language Data for Hundreds of the World's Languages establishment of data curation or management plans and open source / open access As initiative from professional associations
My last EXAMPLE is not about data birth sites or data homes, but a case where the significance/relevance of collaborative data use was obvious, the influenza pandemic, where the evolution of the genome of the virus is crucial for understanding and take corresponding measures like imunization of endangered people.
From the established grassroots approaches It is clear that it will not be one huge bridge that is the perfect solution as infrastructure for open access and open data There will be many bridges of all kinds We should In any case support all initiatives to build these bridges as approaches for OA and OD or both, in order to ensure availaiblilty of relevant resources
As my title suspects, I will focus on the situation in Germany. Gesamtbild Skizzieren I will also have a clear focus on scientific data although there are overlaps with other fields like museums, archives, and government which are also relevant. After a few remarks on the general framework in Germany, I will give you an overview about the network of the players involved in Open Access and Open Data. (e.g. funders, scientists, public, publishers). I will then present two oppositional approaches in detail. First, on the official level, i will talk about a big discussion that is going on in Germany under the title „ Commission for the future of the information infrastructure” Then, on the grassroots level: I will point out some specifics with the help of some prototypical grassroot approaches.
Decision-making units like ministries or science administration can support these approaches, sometimes Germany: mühsam Mostly no interconnections to social or VRE. Also to other disciplines. Interdisciplinary research? Also, open access for papers and data seem to have very few overlap at present on the large scale, although there are couple of approaches from the side of oa publishers, like BioMed Central with their Data policy or the genuine Data journal ESSD. With the data approaches, there is linking to publications but mostly they dont care if they are open or closed.