Open Data Maturity Model

The Open Data Institute from the U.K. has released the Open Data Maturity Model in March 2015.  The model is very similar to the one developed by ANDS in 2011 for research data.  This is a good cross domain validation of such an assessment model for organisations.

"The Open Data Maturity Model is a way to assess how well an organisation publishes and consumes open data, and identifies actions for improvement.

The model is based around five themes and five progress levels. Each theme represents a broad area of operations within an organisation. Each theme is broken into areas of activity, which can then be used to assess progress."

http://opendatainstitute.org/guides/maturity-model 

http://www.ands.org.au/guides/dmframework/dmf-capability-maturity-guide.html

Making data count - data paper in Scientific Data (Nature)

Making data count

John E Kratz & Carly Strasser
Scientific Data 2, Article number: 150039 (2015)

​doi:10.1038/sdata.2015.39

Published online 4/8/15

 

Science is built on a foundation of data. The production and publication of that data should be recognized as valuable scholarship, but data lacks an essential prerequisite for modern-day scholarly recognition—accepted metrics of significance. The scientific community has traditionally estimated the impact of a journal article by counting the number of subsequent references to it; more recently, a suite of web-based alternative metrics (‘altmetrics’) offer faster assessment and the chance capture other kinds of impact¹. Data can be fit into these article-centered assessment systems by proxy, via data descriptor articles in journals like Earth Systems Science Data or Scientific Data^2,3. Another approach is to apply familiar metrics directly to datasets published in online databases or repositories. Complicating matters, the same metric may mean different things with respect to articles versus datasets. A researcher can read an article online closely without downloading the PDF version, but if they view a dataset landing page without downloading the data, their level of engagement is almost certainly low. A better understanding of how to measure data impact is critical if we are to reward data creators and incentivize data publication.

 

 

 

 

Australian universities preserving Asia and Pacific cultural traditions

In this news clip, the ABC reported the role of Australian universities in preserving research data that is of cultural and historical importance to the Asia and Pacific.  Professor Nicholas Evans (Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language) recounted his close collaboration with the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC).

http://youtu.be/5AkxphK31fQ 

For details about how the ARC Centre of Excellence will integrate their data repository with PRDADISEC for accessible future reuse, see

http://www.dynamicsoflanguage.edu.au/research/data-archives/

Open Access to International Space Station Science Data

The Physical Science Informatics System is NASA's new open data repository to allow researchers on Earth to access data collected from the International Space Station. 

"At NASA, we are excited to announce the roll-out of the Physical Science Informatics (PSI) data repository for physical science experiments performed on the International Space Station (ISS). The PSI system is now accessible and open to the public. This will be a resource for researchers to data mine the PSI system and expand upon the valuable research performed on the ISS using it as a research tool to further science, while also fulfilling the President's Open Data Policy."

http://psi.nasa.gov/

A YouTube video about the repository is at

http://youtu.be/4Vx6CNTs-aE