In a series of value-stories, the Open Data Handbook (http://opendatahandbook.org) provides compelling stories around the world why making data more open can generate huge benefits both socially and economically. Here's some samples.
http://opendatahandbook.org/value-stories/en/
Open data reduces mortality rate in UK hospitals
Written by Katelyn Rogers
http://opendatahandbook.org/value-stories/en/uk-mortality/
Hong Kong/China - open sourcing genomes / crowdsourcing killer outbreaks
Written by S.C. Edmunds
http://opendatahandbook.org/value-stories/en/open-sourcing-genomes/
Open data businesses - an oxymoron or a new model?
Written by Mor Rubinstein & Christian Villum
http://opendatahandbook.org/value-stories/en/business-and-open-data/
Exposing $62m in potential pharmaceutical savings in Southern Africa
Written by The Open Data Institute
http://opendatahandbook.org/value-stories/en/pharmaceutical-savings-in-southern-africa/
Sunday, 9 August 2015
Friday, 7 August 2015
Digital Preservation for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities - benefits for everyone
This focus on something new is of course in the context of a greater overall focus on things old – or at least historical. The theme of the conference was ‘Shaping our Legacy: Safeguarding the Social and Cultural Record’ – a useful way to draw together thoughts about the impact of our curation decisions today on the shape of tomorrow’s digital collections. Whether these are collections of art, museum holdings or research datasets, their form and extent will potentially influence thought and decision-making for generations to come.
Whilst much DCC activity engages with research practice from across many disciplines, one area that I find particularly interesting is research practice where the term ‘research data’ is one that researchers are not necessarily comfortable with. It is important to remember that many scholars in the arts and humanities are indeed very confident and comfortable with the term ‘research data’ and apply it happily in their own practice. But not all scholars feel this way, and many of those in my experience happen to emerge from the arts and humanities areas. So how do we engage with these audiences?
Scientists Are Hoarding Data And It’s Ruining Medical Research
We like to imagine that science is a world of clean answers, with priestly personnel in white coats, emitting perfect outputs, from glass and metal buildings full of blinking lights.
The reality is a mess. A collection of papers published on Wednesday — on one of the most commonly used medical treatments in the world — show just how bad things have become. But they also give hope.
The papers are about deworming pills that kill parasites in the gut, at extremely low cost. In developing countries, battles over the usefulness of these drugs have become so contentious that some people call them “The Worm Wars.”
Every year hundreds of millions of children in the developing world are given deworming tablets, whether they have worms or not. It’s easy to see why this intervention is so appealing: In principle, children’s health, survival, and school performance can improve with a simple pill, given just once a year, costing only 2 cents.
This approach was endorsed by the World Health Organization. A meeting of eminent researchers, including four Nobel Prize winners, listed the medications in the top four most cost-effective interventions worldwide. As part of a publicity stunt at the Davos Summit in 2008, Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, reportedly chased world leaders around the room pretending to be a giant intestinal worm.
Nobody doubts that treating people who have worms is a good idea. More problematic is the idea of treating whole populations of schoolchildren to improve health and school performance....
Over 1.5 million ORCID iDs served!
Taken from: http://orcid.org/blog/2015/07/31/15-million-orcid-ids-served
Submitted by Laure Haak on Mon, 2015-08-03 00:00
Growing up, I remember passing by the local hamburger chain (yes, the one with golden arches) and watching the sign tick up from “1 million served” and then switch over to counting in the billions.
While billions and billions should likely remain a statement about stars in the universe, I am very proud that ORCID has reached the earthly milestone of 1.5 million iDs served.
First, I thank you, the community, for your continued interest, support, and engagement. We now have over 300 organizational members and a similar number of member-built identifier “collection points", making it that much easier for researchers to connect their iD with their contributions. We’ve showcased a number of these implementations on our Member Support Center.
Thanks to generous support from the Helmsley Trust and the European Commission, we’ve been able to build our team to meet community demand, and now have technical and outreach staff in Asia, Latin America, North America, Africa, and Europe. We’ve been racking up lots and lots of air miles to meet with you (five continents in as many months for me!), and the regional teams have started a series of regional workshops to bring ORCID to your area.
Our technical team has been busy, launching peer review acknowledgements and an updated API and, coming later this year, support for federated login. We are also pleased to see the community using our record update API, and are looking forward to launches soon by CrossRef and DataCite that will automatically update ORCID records with published papers and datasets for which the author included their ORCID iD.
Together, we are getting a LOT closer to seamless interoperability between research information systems, improved discoverability, and reduced reporting workload for researchers. Let’s keep reaching for the stars!
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