Provenance, the correct description of the whole pathway of data, certainly a quality criteria does not imply the registration of the user.
Exchange of knowledge and/or interpretations of data should be something done by the free decision of the data user, not forcing every user to do it. Once he/she publishes interpretations of data he/she should be forced to exactly and completely cite the sources.

regards

Herbert Schentz
Ökosystemforschung & Monitoring 
Ecosystem Research & Monitoring 
T: +43-(0)1-313 04/5308
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Umweltbundesamt GmbH
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-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Research data publication: announcements and discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Astrid Woollard
Gesendet: Dienstag, 21. Mai 2013 09:38
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: Registrastion for access to data

Thank you for this interesting discussion. In my opinion, the question whether registration is regarded as 'annoying barrier' or not depends on the nature of the data. One has to acknowledge that researchers have different reservations for their data, may it be for commercial exploitation of 'just' for their reputation as scientists.

Personally, I do not mind registering with a platform if I get more value in return. In Biology, it can often be an advantage to know who produced the data and how the raw data looks like, as it is an indicator of reliability of the data. In the past months, I have been working on a report outlining data protection, intellectual property, and ethical issues in the context of data sharing within the EU FP7 project BioMedBridges (www.biomedbridges.eu). The aim of BioMedBridges is to build an e-infrastructure that allows interoperability between data and services in the biological, medical, translational and clinical domains and thus facilitates exchange of data between EU researchers. One of the issues is indeed the question of registration/ authorisation, and I discovered some interesting strategies. One intriguing strategy is employed by the Faculty of 1000 (f1000.com) magazine. F1000 will only accept publications from researchers if they are willing to deposit their entire raw data that was used to generate the paper. Access to this data is not managed by the researcher himself, which in my view is an advantage as really everyone has access to the data and is not dependent on the goodwill of the researcher who deposited the data. However, the researcher can see who accessed his data and has the option of contacting that person (as authorisation is via institutional email addresses). Apparently, this has led to many collaborations - e.g. seemingly 'useless' data was deposited by a researcher who found it difficult to understand his data, another researcher was able make sense of this data by combining it with another dataset, which in turn aided both researchers in their work. I think this is a nice example how data sharing in a protected but open environment may lead to new discoveries.

In summary, I personally think that registration does not contradict open data, especially in a time where citations and H-indices are still the measures of 'good research'. It may even add another layer of quality control (would you deposit all your raw data with your name on it, if it was flawed?).

Best regards,
Astrid


Dr Astrid Woollard
BioMedBridges Security Policy Adviser
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory | Harwell Science & Innovation Campus Didcot, Oxfordshire | OX11 0FA Email : [log in to unmask] Tel : +44 (0) 1235 567 866


-----Original Message-----
From: Research data publication: announcements and discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Schentz Herbert
Sent: 21 May 2013 08:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: AW: Registrastion for access to data

I want to add, that registration of data access is a violation of the privacy of a data user. 
Usage of data and any functionalities of forums (exchange of knowledge and ideas, where you explicitly want to register) should be strictly separated.

Loss of privacy is not generally bad. But there are situations where loss of privacy, and especially that of scientists or citizen scientists, is critical.

Scientists are not always, but sometimes in conflict with those who have financial or political might. And it is very difficult to keep any information about interests and work of people closed, once those data are collected somewhere. That does not mean that those who establish the registration system want to do bad things. But they might  lose control of their data about the interests of scientists or other citizens, be it on  a legal or illegal way.

We e.g. had the situation that there was a conflict between a minister and  scientists concerning the perishing of bees. Regardless, who is right, you can easily imagine, that such a minister might be very interested to know, who accesses data about bees. It might be very difficult to refuse to hand out collected data users and their interests to a minister, when you are paid by that ministry.



By the way: I am very happy about the discussion in this thread, as usually I feel very lonesome when I am warning against registration of data usage.

regards



Herbert Schentz
Ökosystemforschung & Monitoring
Ecosystem Research & Monitoring
T: +43-(0)1-313 04/5308
F: +43-(0)1-313 04/3555
[log in to unmask]
Umweltbundesamt GmbH
Spittelauer Lände 5
1090 Wien
Österreich/Austria
http://www.umweltbundesamt.at
Firmenbuchnummer (Identification-No): FN 187010s
Firmenbuchgericht: Handelsgericht Wien
Die Informationen in dieser Nachricht sind vertraulich und ausschließlich für die/den AdressatIn bestimmt. Sollten Sie diese Nachricht irrtümlich erhalten haben, benachrichtigen Sie bitte umgehend die/den SenderIn und löschen Sie das Original. Jede andere Verwendung dieses E-Mails ist untersagt.

This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any other use of the email by you is prohibited. 


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Research data publication: announcements and discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von James Frew
Gesendet: Dienstag, 21. Mai 2013 01:13
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: Registrastion for access to data

On 2013-05-20 09:06, Joe Hourcle wrote:
> On May 20, 2013, at 11:17 AM, James Frew wrote:
>> Citations to your data in published research are *way* more impressive than anecdotal "nuggets". And tracking DOIs will make it obvious who your *real* users are.
> We should be careful about saying that only one group are legitimate users of the data.

Sorry, poor word choice on my part. For *real*, read *unambiguous*, or *verifiable*, or some such.

I'd be the last person to call any particular use "illegitimate" or "invalid".

I would argue, however, that serendipitous users are even more likely than target users to be deterred by having to register.

/Frew
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