Public Comment on Access to Federally Supported Research and Development Data and Publications

In response to both the recent OSTP memorandum and the proposed bill (FASTR) that call for increased public access to data and publications resulting from federally funded research, a group of cooperating agencies and the National Research Council have organized two planning meetings held May 14-17 to gather stakeholder input (also included are "brief introductory addresses by a select few experts and summarizing commentary by equally few rapporteurs").

Two meetings will be held, one focused on publications (May 14-15) and the other on data (May 16-17). The public is invited to attend in person (at the National Academy of Sciences in DC) or via webcast, but registration is required. Attendees may also request time to present a verbal or written statement.

Sponsoring Agencies:
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
National Institute of Standards and Technology
National Technical Information Service
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Department of Defense
Department of Education
Department of Energy
Department of Health and Human Services
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Department of the Interior
United States Geological Survey
Department of Transportation
Environmental Protection Agency
Institute of Museum and Library Services
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Science Foundation
Smithsonian Institution

DataONE Summer Internship Program

Data folks interested in spending part of their summer working on intensive data-and-science-related topics can now apply for one of eight open DataONE internship positions. The internships are available to undergraduates, graduates and post-graduates who have received their masters in the last five years, and there are no restrictions on field of study as long as prospective intern's qualifications and interests match a project. Each intern will be paired with a mentor, who does not have to be in the same location or institution. 2013 project titles include:

- Next Generation Data Environment: Semantically-Enabling the DataONE Metadata Environment
- Ontology Mappings in the Earth and Environmental Sciences
- Evaluation of Ontology Coverage for Curation
- Integrating Data Stories into DataONE Education and Community Engagement Products
- Data Policies for Public Participation in Scientific Research
- Bi-level Metadata Registry Development
- PBase: Provenance as a First-class Citizen in DataONE
- Build Fundamental Components for Provenance-aware Model Exploration, Evaluation, and Benchmarking Cyber-infrastructure Prototype
- A Visualization Tool for Provenance in DataONE

More detail about these topics and the internships is available at www.dataone.org/internships.

Application deadline is March 17th 2013. The internship runs from May 27 - July 26 and interns will receive a stipend of $5,000.

The Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) is "a virtual organization dedicated to providing open, persistent, robust, and secure access to biodiversity and environmental data, supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation."

Webinar on Text Mining

The Center for Research Libraries is hosting a webinar on text-mining in a few weeks.  It will explore trends in text mining and how publishers and libraries are responding to the challenges that come with it.  Topics to be addressed (from the announcement):

• the types of resources being “mined”, including e-journal databases and digitized newspapers and archives
• recent text-mining projects
• the challenges and issues these present for database publishers
• what role, if any, libraries can play to support these activities
• what new services are envisioned and what is in the pipeline

The webinar will take place online Tuesday, Nov. 13th 11a - 12:30p Pacific Time.  You can register here (may need to sign up for free account first): http://www.crl.edu/events/8391

ICPSR Data Fair On Election Data

ICPSR will be hosting their online 2012 Data Fair on October 1-3.  This year's theme is "Analyzing Election Data with ICPSR" and "the series of webcasts will focus on election data held in ICPSR's archives, and how to use them for analysis and teaching."

From the announcement:

The event is designed for the social sciences data community at large including researchers, librarians, teaching faculty, students, and policymakers from around the world who are interested in the use of social science data.
The first day will provide an orientation to ICPSR's services, including a tutorial on navigating our newly redesigned Web site. Other topics will include the American National Election Studies, minority voting behavior, and using election data in classroom instruction.

The event is free and open to everyone. The tentative schedule of sessions, with links to register for the webcasts, is available here (NOTE: all times are Eastern):

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/membership/datafair/schedule.html

Teaching Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data

If you're going to be in the vicinity of Essex, UK in September, the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) is hosting a free half-day workshop at the UK Data Archive "aimed at best practices in teaching qualitative analysis of secondary data."

For more information, check out their webpage: http://www.esds.ac.uk/qualidata/news/eventdetail.asp?id=3306

Symposium on Global Scientific Data Infrastructure

If you plan to be in the Washington, DC area on August 29th, the National Academy of Sciences is hosting a symposium on Global Scientific Data Infrastructure.  For those of us for whom that would be too far a jaunt for a meeting that would be less than 3 hours (3p-5:45p Eastern), there is the option to participate in a real-time audio-only webcast of the proceedings.  They will also archive that version and make it available on the Board on Research Data and Information's website afterward.

From the announcement:

The Forum will examine potential near-term actions and outcomes that can serve as a focus for community efforts toward a global organization for the exchange of scientific data, initially referred to as the Data Web Forum (DWF). The BRDI Forum will facilitate discussion of the following questions:

1. What useful short-term efforts and deliverables could a global scientific community organization take on that would facilitate data-driven interoperability? Are there any low-hanging fruits or some common elements or approaches that should be addressed early in the process?

2. What stakeholder communities are essential to success or to the implementation of the deliverables raised in #1? (see [1] below) What could be done in the near term by such an organization to promote effective participation by these communities?

On the day of the event, a link will be posted on the National Academies website (www.nationalacademies.org). Webcast listeners will be able to listen either through Windows Media Player or through RealPlayer. 

For more information including a detailed agenda: www.nas.edu/brdi

NISO Forum on Managing & Citing Research Data

Early bird registration is now open for the upcoming NISO Forum: Tracking it Back to the Source: Managing and Citing Research Data being held in Denver, CO on September 24, 2012.

There's a great lineup of presenters including Joan Starr from CDL, Jim Mullins from Purdue, Mark Parsons from NSIDC and a keynote from Allen Renear from U Ill-UC.  That's just looking at the first few sessions.

Early registration is available until Sept 10 with discounts for NISO members and students.  Check out the website for more information: http://www.niso.org/news/events/2012/tracking_it_back_to_the_source/

Lectures from Digital Humanities 2012

The Digital Humanities 2012 conference was held in Hamburg, Germany this week. From the conference website:

Digital Humanities is the annual international conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). ADHO is an umbrella organization whose goals are to promote and support digital research and teaching across arts and humanities disciplines, drawing together humanists engaged in digital and computer-assisted research, teaching, creation, dissemination, and beyond, in all areas reflected by its diverse membership.

The conference program is located here: http://www.dh2012.uni-hamburg.de/conference/programme/
It includes links to abstracts and where you see a link for "Lecture2Go" there are recorded presentations you can watch.  A few titles that caught my eye include:

"The potential of using crowd-sourced data to re-explore the demography of Victorian Britain"

http://lecture2go.uni-hamburg.de/konferenzen/-/k/13917
"Social Network Analysis and Visualization in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson"

http://lecture2go.uni-hamburg.de/konferenzen/-/k/13945
and "Uncertain Date, Uncertain Place: Interpreting the History of Jewish Communities in the Byzantine Empire using GIS"
http://lecture2go.uni-hamburg.de/konferenzen/-/k/13962

Those were just a few.

Presentations from Research Data Access & Preservation Summit

Thanks to Tina Jayroe from U of Wisc-Milwaukee, the first batch of video presentations from the 2012 Research Data Access & Preservation Summit (RDAP) are now available on YouTube.  The conference website can give you more information about the presentations listed below: http://rdap12.posterous.com/

Bill Anderson, University of Texas, Austin [RDAP Welcome & Introductions]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=YsG6SzLKnks&feature=relmfu

Data Management Plans and Policies panel, moderated by Reagan Moore
Suzanne Allard, DataOne:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=vt5olF55Fho&feature=relmfu
Dave Fellinger, Data Direct Networks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=6QY06Z84C30
Carol Beaton Meyer, Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=f8P3uH_et40&feature=relmfu
Reagen Moore, DataNet Federation Consortium:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=jBPzpBSmHq0
Aletia Morgan, Rutgers University Community Repository:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=37W1V5l4Zro
Ryan Stearns, Texas Digital Libraries:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=2efdwMKeQoU
Peter Wittenburg, European Data Infrastructure (EUDAT):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=yioXGUDgT3Y

Data Citation panel, moderated by Joe Hourcle
Joe Hourcle, Solar Data Analysis Center, NASA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=AS6Lf-9VEiw
Paul Uhlir, National Academy of Sciences (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=bhl9gLcVPv0
Paul Uhlir, National Academy of Sciences (part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=6i0lz_2Vodc

More videos to be posted as time permits.

*UPDATE 7/19/12* More videos posted:

Curation Service Models panel, moderated by Matt Myernick
David Minor, University of California, San Diego:
http://youtu.be/NQ-S4iR7n-c
Barbara Pralle, John Hopkins University:
http://youtu.be/w_eCPJHjQfA
Michael Witt, Purdue University
http://youtu.be/0PPUaBwZk-I

SIG-DL Sustainability panel, moderated by Gail Steinhart & Susan Wells Parham
Robert McDonald, Indiana University Libraries:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laiqwPJB1JE
Oya Rieger, Cornell University Library, arXiv:
http://youtu.be/sdbs3kCor_w
Peggy Schaeffer, Dryad Digital Repository:
http://youtu.be/e4XBil1Lr8c

Training Data Management Practitioners Panel, moderated by Bill Anderson
Kirk Borne, George Mason University:
http://youtu.be/Xqo1oF5tMIM
Peter Fox, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:
http://youtu.be/UQnG7EiaN_U
Jian Qin, Syracuse University:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaZUEfsq-xs


Reagan Moore [RDAP Summary and Wrap-up]:
http://youtu.be/lIvX17wbNaA