Paleonet: An Open Letter in Support of Digital Data Archiving

Wed Mar 30 12:32:24 UTC 2011

Dear Michael,

I cannot see this conflict you draft here. PANGAEA data which is
linked at Elsevier of course still remains open access and still
remains freely available at PANGAEA. Just click on one of the data
links on the map and you will reach the PANGAEA site.

But indeed researchers having a problem with sharing their data links
with a commercial publisher should consider this before they release
their scientific results for publications to such a company and decide
for an open access journal instead! But this is another issue..

best regards,
Robert

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 11:18 AM, Michael Knappertsbusch
<Michael.Knappertsbusch at unibas.ch> wrote:
> Dear all
>
> That sounds very promising, indeed.
> The only concern is whether research data remain allways freely accessible:
> There might be a conflict of interests because data archiving systems such
> as Pangea is science driven, while publishers are money driven.
>
> To my knowledge Pangea does provide scientific information and data can be
> obtained for free. This is not the case with many high rank scientific
> journals, for which one has to pay if one wishes to read the full electronic
> article (at least if one is not connected within a university campus network
> and library system).
>
> Just remember: The promise of electronic publication a decade ago was free
> and easy access of scientific articles to everybody all over the world until
> the market was dicovered: Free access is rather the exception than the rule
> today...
>
> Conclusion: Data archives need to follow a dual function: remain fully free,
> but also feed the connection to publishers. But the risk that scientific
> data will be turned into money remains relatively high.
>
> kind regards,
> Michael Knappertsbusch
>
>
>
>
>
> Zitat von Robert Huber <robert.huber at stratigraphy.net>:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> for some paleo related data archiving at PANGAEA
>> (http://www.pangaea.de) is surely also an option. PANGAEA adresses
>> some of the concerns raised here such as intellectual properties
>> issues.
>>
>> PANGAEA enables data sets to be citable and make use of the doi system.
>> This led to an interesting cooperation between PANGAEA and  Elsevier:
>> ("Elsevier and PANGAEA Take Next Step in Connecting Research Articles
>> to Data ":
>> http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_01616).
>>
>> Here is an example how this looks like for micropal data:
>> http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marmicro.2007.02.002
>>
>> best regards,
>> Robert
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 2:38 PM,  <rcpm20 at bath.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Jere,
>>>
>>> Many thanks for taking the time to read and comment on our Open Letter.
>>> We encourage every palaeontologist and everyone with an interest in
>>> palaeontology to do the same so that all our views are represented in one
>>> place for all to see.
>>>
>>> We believe data archiving is 'pushed' by the NSF and increasingly all
>>> other
>>> funding bodies, all over the world, because there are a multitude of
>>> compelling reasons to do so, as we have briefly outlined in our Open
>>> Letter
>>> (http://supportpalaeodataarchiving.co.uk/).
>>>
>>> Yes, we acknowledge that there is a monetary cost associated with data
>>> archiving, and it is an ongoing cost. But in my opinion, relative to the
>>> potential benefits reaped (more science, more synthesis, more
>>> transparency,
>>> more 'reproduceability'...) it will certainly be well-worth it as
>>> evaluated
>>> by any considered cost/benefit analysis.
>>>
>>> To quantify this, let us compare the 'page costs' of publishing a paper
>>> with
>>> the cost of archiving the associated data with Dryad. I'm led to believe
>>> that Dryad currently charges ~25USD per article to archive data, charged
>>> to
>>> the journal (pers. comm. Todd Vision) - a reasonable and wise request to
>>> ensure the long-term future of the availability of the data. Page costs
>>> vary
>>> from journal to journal:  $55 per page (Evolution), $100 per page
>>> (Paleobiology), $195 per page (PNAS), $1300 (total, PLoS ONE), with the
>>> notable exception of Zookeys which can be *free* provided certain
>>> conditions
>>> are met [1]. Clearly, in my opinion relative to page charges, data
>>> archiving
>>> charges are slight but insignificant.
>>>
>>> As for the smaller journals published by smaller less wealthy societies,
>>> I
>>> would advocate a 'Freemium' approach and archive data in free
>>> repositories
>>> e.g. FigShare, MorphoBank, MorphBank, PaleoDB, ZooBank, BioTorrents,
>>> TreeBASE II, and others... These may perhaps be less certain in terms of
>>> long-term sustainability, but have good short-term prospects, and they're
>>> free, so why not! - in terms of additional time cost: it only took me 60
>>> seconds to upload a test file and associated metadata to FigShare just
>>> recently, so again, this is not a problem.
>>>
>>> And to those who say that $25 per article may only subsidise the 'true
>>> cost'
>>> of archiving (I don't know the economics of this myself), this is where
>>> funding body support comes in: would it not be hypocritical for funding
>>> bodies to urge data archiving and not help to fund it, at least in part?
>>>
>>> The key thing *we* can do to ensure that archiving stays funded and
>>> viable,
>>> is to embrace and support good and useful data archives by depositing our
>>> data there AND re-using data from these archives (with full and proper
>>> citation of both the original dataset(s) used AND the repository from
>>> which
>>> one obtained the dataset(s)).
>>>
>>> Finally, as for the article you mention:
>>> Hanson, B., Sugden, A., and Alberts, B. 2011. Making data maximally
>>> available. Science 331:649. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1203354
>>>
>>> I encourage everyone to read this if you have access. It's a good article
>>> and I do not think it finds the "future bleak" as you say - quite the
>>> opposite in my opinion. There is a wealth of data out there and we must
>>> learn new ways and build new tools to be able to fully make use of it
>>> all.
>>>
>>> I would think from this that the future is very bright for data archiving
>>> and palaeontological science :)
>>>
>>>
>>> Kind regards to one and all,
>>>
>>> Ross
>>>
>>>
>>> 1:
>>>
>>> http://pensoftonline.net/zookeys/index.php/journal/about/submissions#authorFees
>>> thanks to V. Blagoderov (NHM) for pointing this out to me
>>>
>>> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
>>> Ross Mounce
>>> PhD Student
>>> Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
>>> University of Bath
>>> 4 South Building, Lab 1.07
>>> http://bath.academia.edu/RossMounce
>>> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Paleonet mailing list
>>> Paleonet at nhm.ac.uk
>>> http://mailman.nhm.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/paleonet
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Robert Huber,
>>
>> WDC-MARE / PANGAEA - www.pangaea.de
>> Stratigraphy.net - www.stratigraphy.net
>> _____________________________________________
>> MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences
>> University Bremen
>> Leobener Strasse
>> POP 330 440
>> 28359 Bremen
>> Phone ++49 421 218-65593, Fax ++49 421 218-65505
>> e-mail rhuber at wdc-mare.org
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> PD Dr. Michael Knappertsbusch
> Curator for micropaleontology
> Natural History Museum Basel
> West-European Micropaleontological Reference Center for the DSDP/ODP
> Augustinergasse 2
> 4001-Basel
> Switzerland
>
> Tel. +41-61-266 55 64
> Fax. +41-61-266 55 46
>
> Email: michael.knappertsbusch at unibas.ch
> Internet: http://pages.unibas.ch/museum/microfossils/index.html
> Homepage Museum: http://www.nmb.bs.ch
>
>
>
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-- 
Dr. Robert Huber,

WDC-MARE / PANGAEA - www.pangaea.de
Stratigraphy.net - www.stratigraphy.net
_____________________________________________
MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences
University Bremen
Leobener Strasse
POP 330 440
28359 Bremen
Phone ++49 421 218-65593, Fax ++49 421 218-65505
e-mail rhuber at wdc-mare.org