Licence to Share Research and Collaboration through Go-Geo! and ShareGeo

Guy McGarva, Geoservices Support, Project Manager for ShareGeo Nicola Osborne, Social Media Officer for EDINADavid Medyckyj-Scott, Research & Geo-data Services Team Manager

UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2009: Sharing & Collaboration Wednesday 9th December 2009

Outline of this talk

• Introduction to ShareGeo & Go-Geo!

• The ShareGeo and Go-Geo! Community.

• The benefits and challenges of sharing geospatial data.

• Our experiences of enabling sharing of geospatial data sets (so far).

• Challenges and opportunities for the future.

Introduction to ShareGeo & Go-Geo!http://edina.ac.uk/digimap

What is the ‘community’ ?

• 40,000 users in 160 institutions.• Scientists, researchers and

students who use geospatial data.• Those with data to share.• Individuals looking for existing

data and relevant resources.• Those seeking visibility or

reputation gains through building an active Depositor Profile.

• Engagement via the Digimap Blog, emails, RSS feeds, website updates, newsletters and Go-Geo! Twitter stream.

• Large natural overlap between the ShareGeo and Go-Geo! user communities.

DigimapUsers

Why Share Geospatial data?• Significant collections of

geospatial data have already been created.

• High cost (time and money) associated with collecting data.

• Existing data can form useful components of new data sets.

• Research and so use of data can be over long time periods

• Increase visibility and/or create a record of data.

• Benefit from and work with derived licensed data.

Examples of types of Geospatial data in ShareGeo

Grids Boundaries

DTM

Derived OS data

GPS

Land -use

Imagery

Challenges of sharing Geospatial Data

• Sharing Licensed Data, particularly derived data, requires compliance with often complex licenses.

• Increased sharing of data is useful only if data has integrity and is of consistent quality1.

• Commercial arrangements and third party data are subject to additional restrictions.

• There are technical issues such as format.

• Any shared data will be subject to a distributed trust network – you must trust any potential downloader not to expose or misuse data.

Derived Data & Licenses

Publish Metadata in Go-Geo! using GeoDoc

Private Institutional Node

Public Research Cluster Node (planned)

Create Metadata in GeoDoc

Create Metadata in GeoDoc

Create Metadata in GeoDoc

Create Metadata in GeoDoc

Publish metadata to a Institution Node

Publish metadata as Public

Publish metadata as Cluster Node

No one will be able to discover your metadata

Only members of your institution will be able to discover your metadata

Anyone searching Go-Geo! or the www will be able to discover your metadata

Anyone registerd as part of your cluster will be able to discover your metadata

You can export metadata to xml to save locally

You can export metadata to xml to save locally

You can export metadata to xml to save locally

You can export metadata to xml to save locally

ShareGeo & Go-Geo!

• ShareGeo is intended for when:

– You are willing or able to share your data.

– You want to reuse existing datasets.

– Within a known community

• Go-Geo! provides an alternative sharing mechanism for those that need to:

– Publicise the existence of data.

– Share metadata about ongoing work where the collected data may still be changing.

– Cannot trace all licenses for – and therefore cannot share - complex data combinations (‘Grey’ data).

– Share metadata publicly OR with peers.

Our contribution experiences

• Usage of both services is steadily growing…• But most of our users are consumers not creators:

– Around 0.5% of ShareGeo users upload data, but 22% of ShareGeo users download data.

– 1.5% of Go-Geo! Users create metadata records; 18% of all Go-Geo! visitors access these.

Our contribution experiences compared to others’

• 1:9:902 is the often quoted rule for online participation• Under 0.0001% of Firefox users contribute to development or testing3, 4.• 0.02% of Wikipedia users are (active) editors/contributors5

• 7% of OpenStreetMap users make some type of edit each month6

• 10% of Twitter users author 90% of all Tweets7

• 24% of the British Public have voted for a reality TV show8

• 49% of active UK Internet users have a profile on a Social Networking Site9

• 62% of the registered UK voters voted in the 2005 General Election10

Our Experiences to Date• Far more downloads than uploads• Comments back from ShareGeo users include:

“I am not sure if my data would be of interest to others “

“I have often considered adding data to ShareGeo, given how often individuals must reproduce the work of obtaining and pre-processing datasets; however the license agreements for each datasets prohibit such action. “

“If I had any data to share I would definitely use ShareGeo.“

Sharing Behaviours & Cultures • Academic culture

– Funding competitive.– Access can be very restricted (especially pre-publication).– Commercial restrictions may apply.– Collaboration is rarely directly rewarded.– It is hard to trust the reliability of others’ data– As a contributor there are concerns that:

• Data could be misused (maliciously or not, “Data is often viewed through a tribal prism”11, 12).

• You might somehow be liable for what others’ do with/derive from your data.

• You could receive time-consuming questions about your data.

• Licensing culture– Perceived as complex and litigious.– Can be intimidating even if data is licensed for sharing.

• Personal vs. community benefit– Greatest benefit to the community paradoxically when a contributor is

exiting it (e.g. graduating students).– Selfless attitude & strong sense of community rare.

Challenges for the Future• Raise awareness and

increase impact of ShareGeo and Go-Geo!

• Increase the number of both passive users and proactive creators.

• Define and publicize benefits to depositors particularly around:– Community benefits

(continuity, reuse & saved costs).

– Personal reputation benefits (e.g. citation).

• Engage in the “Making Public Data Public ” initiative

Opportunities“Making Public Data Public” initiative13:

• Prime Minister announced, in November 200914, that Ordnance Survey is going to make “some” data available for free:

– Electoral and local authority boundaries

– Postcode areas– Mid-scale mapping

• Data from other agencies including crime, transport, health, education to be included.

• Should reduce barriers to sharing data.

Short Term Technical Improvements

• Integrate with standard desktop apps for ‘one-touch’ submission e.g. using SWORD.

• Visualize data with plug-in applications.

• Option to expose metadata either to search engines (Google) directly or via Go-Geo.

• Provide data in alternative formats, including web-services.

• Add more social features such as annotations, tagging and ratings.

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Long Term Policy Improvements• Source more open data (especially as more types of data

become open).• Create ‘open access’ ShareGeo for unlicensed and/or less

restrictively licensed materials.• Measure - and display – the impact (re/use) of data more

effectively.• Improve visibility of data reuse and of the impact of

ShareGeo (e.g. through citations).• Seamless interoperability – around policy, licensing, access

levels etc. - with Go-Geo metadata portal.

Thank You

• If you have any Questions we would be very happy to answer them.

• Or email us:• nicola.osborne@ed.ac.uk• guy.mcgarva@ed.ac.uk

• Or if you have any general comments about ShareGeo or Go-Geo! Email:• edina@ed.ac.uk

Links• ShareGeo: http://edina.ac.uk/projects/sharegeo/• Go-Geo!: http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/• EDINA: http://www.edina.ac.uk/

References1. Brown, Ian (2009). Cybercrime and data sharing. Slides presented at the Fifth Annual European Geospatial Intelligence

Conference in London on 22nd Jan 2009. Accessed 1st December 2009: http://www.slideshare.net/blogzilla/cybercrime-and-data-sharing-presentation

2. Neilson, Jakon (2006). Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute. Jakob Neilson’s Alertbox (9th October 2006). Accessed 1st December 2009: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html.

3. Mozilla. (2009). Our Contributors. Accessed 2nd December 2009: http://www.mozilla.org/credits/4. Shankland, Stephen (2009). After 5 years, Firefox faces new challenges. CNET news (9th November 2009). Accessed 2nd

December 2009: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10392542-2.html5. Wikimedia (2009). Wikimedia Monthly Report Card (October 2009). Accessed 2nd December 2009:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/#fragment-636. OpenStreetMap (2009). Stats – OpenStreetMap. Accessed 3rd December 2009: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats7. Heil, Bill and Piskorski,Mikolaj. (2009). New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets. Harvard Business

School Blog (1st June 2009). Accessed 2nd December 2009: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html

8. Ipsos MORI (2008) quoted in Wardle, Claire and Williams, Andrew (2008). UGC@thebbc: understanding it’s impact upon contributors, non-contributors and BBC News. Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff. Accessed 1st December 2009: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/knowledgeexchange/cardiffone.pdf

9. Dutton, W.H., Helsper, E.J., and Gerber, M.M. (2009). The Internet in Britain: 2009. Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Accessed 2nd December 2009: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/microsites/oxis/publications.cfm

10. BBC (2005). Election 2005: Results. Accessed 1st December 2009: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/constituencies/default.stm.

11. Rusbriger, Alan (2009). Climate science: Inconvenient truths. Editorial for Guardian.co.uk: Comment is Free section (3rd December 2009). Accessed 3rd December 2009: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/03/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails

12. Hickman, Leo and Randerson, James (2009). Climate sceptics claim leaked emails are evidence of collusion among scientists. Guardian.co.uk (20th November 2009). Accessed 3rd December 2009: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails

13. Cabinet Office (2009). Stephen Timms reports progress on Making Public Data Public. Cabinet Office Digital Engagement blog (27th October 2009). Accessed 3rd December 2009: http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/post/2009/10/27/Stephen-Timms-reports-progress-on-Making-Public-Data-Public.aspx

14. Prime Ministers Office (2009). Ordnance Survey to open up data – PM. Number10.gov.uk (17th November 2009). Accessed 3rd December 2009: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21343