Dear Astrid and all,

first lat me ask you this: Why should rules and practises of 
disclosing "readership" of data be so different from articles?

Am 21.05.13 09:37, schrieb Astrid Woollard:
> 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.
I agree with that wholeheartedly - a researcher must stand behind 
his/her published findings "with their names".

But this has nothing to do with the question whether a "reader" of 
those data should be known to the producer of data or anyone else.
Only if the data are actually *used* in generating knew knowledge, the 
source must be disclosed (aka good scientific practise).

Even the argument of enabling new collaborations does not hold: If the 
data creator is known, the reader/user can initiate collaboration at 
his/her own discretion - as it should be. Else, anybody might upload 
some data, make it look interesting ("honey pot") and follow up with 
unsolicited offers of any kind after download.

Another aspect should guide us as well: In the age of "big data" we 
should ask ourselves, what happens if the whole browsing/download 
history of a researcher became known to interested parties. Even if it 
is not an evil government but just your competitor with the better 
data analysis department. There was a funny incident some years ago, 
when Amazon disclosed *who* had bought which book. Suddenly, one could 
see which topics Microsoft employees were interested in - in that case 
it was LDAP (that was before Active Directory).

In summary: If a researcher publishes, contributions must be named 
(and not pseudonymous). If a researcher reads/uses it should be 
anonymous, and where registration/authorization is unavoidable (e.g. 
for any kind of protection issues) this should be done by trustworthy 
third parties and not disclosed except to an ombuds person.

best,

Hans