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There's been a lot of talk here about the need for academic researchers to share their data. I'm interested what people's opinions are about this when it's corp

by lutorm 17y ago

There's been a lot of talk here about the need for academic researchers to share their data. I'm interested what people's opinions are about this when it's corporations doing the researching.

anamax 17y ago
> There's been a lot of talk here about the need for academic researchers to share their data. I'm interested what people's opinions are about this when it's corporations doing the researching. Is their research affecting public policy? I only care about your research into the affect that skull shape has on criminal behavior when said research is used to argue for laws.
drats 17y ago
The pressure to publish is so high, promotions et cetera all rely on it. Putting together large datasets can be can be costly and time consuming and the hope is often to get a few publications out of it. I think citations need to acknowledge datasets more, as do promotions otherwise people will have large incentives to "silo" vertically and not share. A big issue that has no excuse is public access to journals though. It's amazing that the public pays for the research and then pays for it again and again in every library's subscription to the vampire publishing houses who do nothing other than distribute a few hardcopies that nobody reads and then gatekeep the pdfs (the editing and review is all done by academics, so it's just copy and typesetting that's commanding this huge price). Maths, physics and comp sci are some of the better disciplines (masters of LaTeX) for making things available online, but everywhere else it's horrible.
- eru 17y ago
  I hope some of the system biologists are seeing the light. (But that's only because they are getting colonised by mathematicians.)
kurtosis 17y ago
I'd personally like to see more support for people gathering more diverse data sets. If private companies feel it is in their interest to share their data with others and contribute to scientific knowledge then this is wonderful. Obviously if your result is to be believed, you will have to share data so that someone else can attempt to replicate your analysis or compare your results with other methods. It is nice to have benchmark datasets, but there is a danger that research on "object recognition" can become research on the "caltech 101" dataset.

by lutorm 17y ago

There's been a lot of talk here about the need for academic researchers to share their data. I'm interested what people's opinions are about this when it's corporations doing the researching.

anamax 17y ago

> There's been a lot of talk here about the need for academic researchers to share their data. I'm interested what people's opinions are about this when it's corporations doing the researching. Is their research affecting public policy? I only care about your research into the affect that skull shape has on criminal behavior when said research is used to argue for laws.

drats 17y ago

The pressure to publish is so high, promotions et cetera all rely on it. Putting together large datasets can be can be costly and time consuming and the hope is often to get a few publications out of it. I think citations need to acknowledge datasets more, as do promotions otherwise people will have large incentives to "silo" vertically and not share. A big issue that has no excuse is public access to journals though. It's amazing that the public pays for the research and then pays for it again and again in every library's subscription to the vampire publishing houses who do nothing other than distribute a few hardcopies that nobody reads and then gatekeep the pdfs (the editing and review is all done by academics, so it's just copy and typesetting that's commanding this huge price). Maths, physics and comp sci are some of the better disciplines (masters of LaTeX) for making things available online, but everywhere else it's horrible.

eru 17y ago
I hope some of the system biologists are seeing the light. (But that's only because they are getting colonised by mathematicians.)

kurtosis 17y ago

I'd personally like to see more support for people gathering more diverse data sets. If private companies feel it is in their interest to share their data with others and contribute to scientific knowledge then this is wonderful. Obviously if your result is to be believed, you will have to share data so that someone else can attempt to replicate your analysis or compare your results with other methods. It is nice to have benchmark datasets, but there is a danger that research on "object recognition" can become research on the "caltech 101" dataset.