Slides from a talk given at Manchester Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation on 13 October 2009. Focusses on the reasons why there is public funding of science and the issues that need to be tackled to insure this in the future.

1. Open Data:
What can we do? What should we do?

2. Open Data:
What can we do? What should we do?
poin t?
a ny
th ere
nd is
A

3. About me.

4. I live in Bath
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andypowe11/3915450391

5. I work at RAL

6. I work for STFC...

7. But
The 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....

8. I get up in the morning
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andypowe11/3251538402

9. ...and catch a train
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattbuck007/3710451826

10. ...and a bus

11. I work on...
Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons
Succinate_Dehydrogenase_1YQ3_and_Membrane.png MGMT BDNA_1T38.png

12. ...and get to do cool stuff

13. Mixture of small-lab work...

14. ...and big facility experiments

15. Lots of reading...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loty/326761635

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

17. ...too much travel...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22819720@N02/2306780847

19. ...which leads to
too much of this

21. Why?

22. Why do I do it?

23. Why do they pay?

24. Why do they pay?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mararie/3313582639/ CC-BY-SA

25. Why do they pay?
w e
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mararie/3313582639/ CC-BY-SA

26. A (naive) history

27. Before 1945
Wellcome Images

28. 1939-45

29. http://flickr.com/photos/14405058@N08/2618721930
Wikimedia Commons
Kotzebue_AFS_Long_Range_Radar.jpg

32. Science won the war

33. ...therefore...

34. Science needs funding

35. ...but the war ended
sixty years ago...

36. But that’s ok

38. We have new wars.

39. Clearly it is a lot more
complicated than that
http://www.flickr.com/photos/storm-crypt/2078500698/

40. But we seem
focused on threats

41. We believe our own propaganda...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ansik/3844530655

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

43. So what’s
the answer?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrs_logic/3320303076

44. I don’t really know...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/valeriebb/2248744703

45. ...but here are some ideas
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ful1to/3783198574

46. 1. The personal

47. Be
with yourself
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielle_scott/3690339561

48. My aim is to...

49. Maximise the (positive) impact I have on the world
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amardilo/3231427553 CC-BY

50. ...through my work or
through enabling others.

51. I work mainly on technique
development and enabling
technologies

52. I aim to maximise the ability
of people to (re-)use my work

53. The web makes publishing easy

54. ...data, documents, media...

56. Publishing (broadcasting) is easy

57. ...sharing is harder.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/missrogue/107787363

58. 2. The social
(and technical)

59. 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

60. “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

61. Interoperability is the key...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfllaw/222795669

62. Technical interoperability...
...formats, vocabularies
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffsand/3871415191

63. Legal interoperability...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spunter/3239363956

64. Legal interoperability...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spunter/3239363956

65. Legal interoperability...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spunter/3239363956

66. Technical Legal
interop. interop.
Process
interoperability

67. Systems need to work
with existing process

68. A short story...

69. MyTea project:
A fully semantic
laboratory record
for chemistry
http://mytea.org.uk/

70. But not molecular biology

71. General
MyTea
Specific
Unstructured Structured

72. General
?
MyTea
Specific
Unstructured Structured

73. General
Blogs
?
MyTea
Specific
Unstructured Structured

74. A recipe for chaos?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benuski/3452291541

75. Yes to start with...

76. But then something
interesting happened...

77. Templates Metadata

78. Self assembling ontology?
Sequence ontology:
SO:0000696 “oligo”
SO:0000155 “plasmid”
...but...
SO:0000006 “PCR product”
or
SO:0000412 “rest. fragment”?

79. Capture first...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/furtwangl/3851841424

80. Dionaea muscipula Musca domestica
chomped on
...then add structure

81. Map our process onto
agreed vocabularies

82. ...when we write the paper
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tnarik/366393127

83. Machines do structure
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yeowatzup/2463225297

84. ....humans tell stories

85. Tools that capture
structure as we choose
the pieces for our narrative

86. We can make it easy to share
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doubledareya/2443303399

87. ...but will we want to share?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66164549@N00/2162663143

88. Not according to this paper...

89. We need agreed goals...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frli/3586354961

90. 3. The political

91. Why do we fund science?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mararie/3313582639/ CC-BY-SA

92. If we don’t have answers...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattymatt/3017263513

93. ...then at least...

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

95. Optimise for....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomarthur/3593729997

96. ....not this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vrogy/514733529

97. Less of this...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ehnmark/463965443

98. ...more of this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chadmiller/2740551034

99. ...and a lot less of this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tammra/283690669/

100. More open research.

101. An opportunity to engage...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidcjones/1422043515

104. Hundreds of thousands...

105. ...but not if data is locked away
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andypowe11/3759152528

106. More open research.

107. Measure
ourselves...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3209939998

108. ...and then
do something
about it
http://www.flickr.com/photos/silas216/149401489

109. More. Open. Research.

110. But fit the existing processes...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38485387@N02/3581504276

111. Open Data:
What can we do? What should we do?

112. What can we do?

113. Technically able to share
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/3088582622

114. What should we do?

115. Tools for capturing...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pandawan/3950755957

116. And is there any point?

117. <insert answer here>

118. Cameron.Neylon@stfc.ac.uk
http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen
http://slideshare.net/cameronneylon
Twitter: @cameronneylon
Friendfeed: 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