4 ms·

I'm in a field that would have to change significantly if funding agencies demanded open access. I would love it. Right not there's basically zero funding for

by dguest 3y ago

I'm in a field that would have to change significantly if funding agencies demanded open access. I would love it. Right not there's basically zero funding for people who work on making our data open. It's kind of a hobby project that you do if you have free time and no one has found a real job for you.

warkdarrior 3y ago
I don't think anyone calls for funding just for making the data open. Funding should be for some scientific goal, with the added requirement that all data and code are made open source/open access once the funded project reaches a milestone (e.g., when publishing a paper).
- michaelmior 3y ago
  I think part of the challenge here is that in some fields, proprietary tools and formats are so ingrained that requiring openness could be a massive burden to the point where it would be difficult to put together a reasonable budget that includes real open data access. I think it's important to acknowledge here that there are degrees of open access. Simply providing data files is relatively easy. Making reproducible workflows as a non-developer can be nearly impossible in some cases.
  - neltnerb 3y ago
    > Making reproducible workflows as a non-developer can be nearly impossible in some cases. Why is that the case? Size? I am very familiar with dealing with old proprietary things that have to be fought tooth and nail to give you a simple text format, but that doesn't seem to be nearly the scale of trouble as you describe.
    - michaelmior 3y ago
      Old proprietary things can definitely be part of the problem. A lot of people will just cut and paste various scripts, download various packages, and make random edits until things work. I can't blame them. These things can be hard and for those not from a computer science background, it can be difficult to comprehend how things actually work. Just getting old software to compile can be a challenge in itself. You could say to just put everything in a Docker container. Then when you have it working, anyone can just use that container. That's not so easy for someone who doesn't even know what Docker is. I'm not saying that to suggest people are incompetent. As developers, we really should do better to make things easy.
  - dguest 3y ago
    Our software is open source already. What is ingrained is the idea among my collaborators that open data is kind of an "us vs them" problem: it's our data, and the public hasn't been demanding access, but if we gave it to them they would just scoop us and steal all the science, or they would do something stupid and force us to disprove it. It's all quite speculative but the limited data releases so far haven't caused the field to collapse as some doomsayers predicted. Meanwhile I'd just like more open data because it would make collaboration easier.

by dguest 3y ago

warkdarrior 3y ago

I don't think anyone calls for funding just for making the data open. Funding should be for some scientific goal, with the added requirement that all data and code are made open source/open access once the funded project reaches a milestone (e.g., when publishing a paper).

michaelmior 3y ago
I think part of the challenge here is that in some fields, proprietary tools and formats are so ingrained that requiring openness could be a massive burden to the point where it would be difficult to put together a reasonable budget that includes real open data access. I think it's important to acknowledge here that there are degrees of open access. Simply providing data files is relatively easy. Making reproducible workflows as a non-developer can be nearly impossible in some cases.
- neltnerb 3y ago
  > Making reproducible workflows as a non-developer can be nearly impossible in some cases. Why is that the case? Size? I am very familiar with dealing with old proprietary things that have to be fought tooth and nail to give you a simple text format, but that doesn't seem to be nearly the scale of trouble as you describe.
  - michaelmior 3y ago
    Old proprietary things can definitely be part of the problem. A lot of people will just cut and paste various scripts, download various packages, and make random edits until things work. I can't blame them. These things can be hard and for those not from a computer science background, it can be difficult to comprehend how things actually work. Just getting old software to compile can be a challenge in itself. You could say to just put everything in a Docker container. Then when you have it working, anyone can just use that container. That's not so easy for someone who doesn't even know what Docker is. I'm not saying that to suggest people are incompetent. As developers, we really should do better to make things easy.
- dguest 3y ago
  Our software is open source already. What is ingrained is the idea among my collaborators that open data is kind of an "us vs them" problem: it's our data, and the public hasn't been demanding access, but if we gave it to them they would just scoop us and steal all the science, or they would do something stupid and force us to disprove it. It's all quite speculative but the limited data releases so far haven't caused the field to collapse as some doomsayers predicted. Meanwhile I'd just like more open data because it would make collaboration easier.