1. When Open Access meets Open Data
Christopher Gutteridge

2. Christopher Gutteridge
Systems developer as University of Southampton for 18 years.
(was) Lead developer on EPrints v2 & 3
Founder data.ac.uk
Winner 2012 THE Higher Award for Outstanding ICT Innovation of the year (for data.southampton.ac.uk)

3. data.southampton.ac.uk
Provides datasets for anything and everything we can that’s not a secret
Buildings, rooms, people, courses, services, events…
Provide tools and webpages based on this data

4. Gaining Value from Open Data
Consuming
Publishing
Augmenting
Aggregating
Reducing barriers for your own staff

5. BIG
DATA

6. to be processed by normal methods.
Big Data
BIG
Data which is too
to be processed by normal methods.

7. to be processed by normal methods.
Big Data
Data which is too
Rapid
to be processed by normal methods.

8. to be processed by normal methods.
Big Data
Data which is too
HeterOgeneous
to be processed by normal methods.

9. Needless heterogeneity can derail research
Too much effort to align datasets.
Not possible to make
reusable tools
CC-BY photo by
Flickr user duncanh1

10. Research Dataset Metadata
Research Output Data
Subject-specific metadata
Bibliographic Metadata
Catalogue Metadata

11. Research Dataset Metadata
spreadsheet of results
Methodology, data format
Title, Author, Institution
Last modified, Uploaded by

12. Institutional (Data) Repositories
Metadata
Can be interrogated
Research Output Data
Subject-specific metadata
Bibliographic Metadata
Catalogue Metadata
Data
Can only be downloaded

13. Subject Specific Repositories
Metadata
Can be interrogated
Research Output Data
Subject-specific metadata
Bibliographic Metadata
Catalogue Metadata
Data
Can only be downloaded

14. Open data provides a compromise
Distributed storage in Various Repositories
Services aggregate subject-specific metdata to provide enhanced discovery of open datasets
Multiple competing discovery services can help drive innovation
Discoverability of subject-specific metadata is essential

15. Automatically discovers equipment data from all .ac.uk sites
2769 websites
Automation massively reduces staffing costs
Low effort for institutions-
A third just provide a well-structured spreadsheet!
Not a single-point-of-failure

16. .ac.uk

17. .ac.uk

18. Greater than the sum of its parts…

22. $ ./generate-world Demo --postcode PO381NL --size 250

23. $ ./generate-world Demo --postcode PO381NL --size 250

25. Photo by Flickr user: Krissen
Scratch 1 :
Photo by Flickr user: Krissen
CC-BY-NC-ND

26. Scratch 2
Enabling researchers
to scratch an itch

27. Discoverable for researchers
Does data about X exist?
How do I get it?
How do I interpret it?
Datasets need to be discoverable in ways appropriate to the research area

28. Leading a horse to water
Academics are starting to feel the pressure to publish data.
This means many will be begrudgingly doing the minimum required.

29. Making them drink Esteem benefits Immediate benefits
want to
Esteem benefits
Give academic credit for dataset citations
Immediate benefits
Provide analysis tools in the repository
Automated analysis tools
Publishing data becomes part of the workflow

30. Automation Automated checking of reproducibility
Find all the datasets my new method could analyse
Autodetect new candidate datasets, auto- generate and publish analysis
An immediate benefit to the data creator
Who gains the research credit if there are automated steps?

31. Summary We should be fostering interoperability of data
Make data discoverable for researchers
Help them satisfy their curiosity
One size does not fit all
But some solutions will fit many cases

32. How does what we are doing make research better?