(top reply) Ben,
What a great article. Dunno why, but it really brings to mind the following I read yesterday (in some strange way, both articles pull the same strings in my heart) [http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mining.html] As scientists, are we going to be farmers, or miners? On Apr 6, 2011, at 8:12 AM, Ben O'Steen wrote: > There was an article I found via twitter that seems to be very pertinent > to this discussion. I'll include the paragraphs that summed up the > current data situation and drives: > > "When datasets were sparse and only connected to the lab that produced > them, we would brood every one of them, protect (patent) them and work > on them in isolation in order to 'sell' them as chickens, usually in the > form of a largely narrative article. Other scientists need to combine a > minimum of two existing publications to generate new eggs and breed more > chickens. However, chickens have become overabundant: more than 20 > million articles exist in biomedicine alone. More recently, valuable > aggregations of data were brought online (for example, data sets in GEO, > curated databases such as SwissProt and locus-specific human gene > variation databases (locus-specific databases such as the Leiden Open > Variation Database LOVD). Now, data (eggs) have become a direct source > of new in silico discoveries and a unit of scientific trade. > > But the scientific market has no way to value eggs because the entire > system is built upon judging and exchanging chickens for acknowledgement > and credit (through citations and other measures of impact). On the > other hand, for effective and evidence-based breeding, we need the eggs > as well as information from the parent chickens to assess the value of > the eggs. This is where a major challenge lies: in the long overdue > adaptation in scholarly communication. The data-intensive science wave > that has come over us calls for innovative ways of data sharing, > stewardship and valuation. We must respect the connection between the > articles and the data and value both appropriately." > > > [Full article at: > http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v43/n4/full/ng0411-281.html > (Nature Genetics 43, 281–283 (2011) doi:10.1038/ng0411-281) > > "The value of data" > > Abstract - "Data citation and the derivation of semantic constructs > directly from datasets have now both found their place in scientific > communication. The social challenge facing us is to maintain the value > of traditional narrative publications and their relationship to the > datasets they report upon while at the same time developing appropriate > metrics for citation of data and data constructs."] > > .. -- Puneet Kishor http://punkish.org Research http://carbonmodel.org Science Fellow http://creativecommons.org _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
