Open Access Button

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About the Open Access Button: “The key functions of the Open Access Button are finding free research, making more research available and also advocacy. Here’s how each works.

Finding free papers

Research published in journals that require you to pay to read can sometimes be accessed free in other places. These other copies are often very similar to the published version, but may lack nice formatting or be a version prior to peer review. These copies can be found in research repositories, on authors websites and many other places because they’re archived. To find these versions we identify the paper a user needs and effectively search on Google Scholar and CORE to find these copies and link them to the users.

Making more research, or information about papers available

If a free copy isn’t available we aim to make one. This is not a simple task and so we have to use a few different innovative strategies. First, we email the author of the research and ask them to make a copy of the research available – once they do this we’ll send it to everyone who needs it. Second, we create pages for each paper needed which, if shared, viewed, and linked to an author could see and provide their paper on. Third, we’re building ways to find associated information about a paper such as the facts contained, comments from people who’ve read it, related information and lay summaries.

Advocacy

Unfortunately the Open Access Button can only do so much, and isn’t a perfect or long term solution to this problem. The data and stories collected by the Button are used to help make the changes required to really solve this issue. We also support campaigns and grassroots advocates with this at openaccessbutton.org/action..”

The government wants to study ‘social pollution’ on Twitter

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ajit Pai in the Washington Post: “If you take to Twitter to express your views on a hot-button issue, does the government have an interest in deciding whether you are spreading “misinformation’’? If you tweet your support for a candidate in the November elections, should taxpayer money be used to monitor your speech and evaluate your “partisanship’’?

My guess is that most Americans would answer those questions with a resounding no. But the federal government seems to disagree. The National Science Foundation , a federal agency whose mission is to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the national defense,” is funding a project to collect and analyze your Twitter data.
The project is being developed by researchers at Indiana University, and its purported aim is to detect what they deem “social pollution” and to study what they call “social epidemics,” including how memes — ideas that spread throughout pop culture — propagate. What types of social pollution are they targeting? “Political smears,” so-called “astroturfing” and other forms of “misinformation.”
Named “Truthy,” after a term coined by TV host Stephen Colbert, the project claims to use a “sophisticated combination of text and data mining, social network analysis, and complex network models” to distinguish between memes that arise in an “organic manner” and those that are manipulated into being.

But there’s much more to the story. Focusing in particular on political speech, Truthy keeps track of which Twitter accounts are using hashtags such as #teaparty and #dems. It estimates users’ “partisanship.” It invites feedback on whether specific Twitter users, such as the Drudge Report, are “truthy” or “spamming.” And it evaluates whether accounts are expressing “positive” or “negative” sentiments toward other users or memes…”

Tackling Wicked Government Problems

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Jackson Nickerson and Ronald Sanders: “How can government leaders build, sustain, and leverage the cross-organizational collaborative networks needed to tackle the complex interagency and intergovernmental challenges they increasingly face? Tackling Wicked Government Problems: A Practical Guide for Developing Enterprise Leaders draws on the experiences of high-level government leaders to describe and comprehensively articulate the complicated, ill-structured difficulties they face—often referred to as “wicked problems”—in leading across organizational boundaries and offers the best strategies for addressing them.
Tackling Wicked Government Problems explores how enterprise leaders use networks of trusted, collaborative relationships to respond and lead solutions to problems that span agencies. It also offers several approaches for translating social network theory into practical approaches for these leaders to build and leverage boundary-spanning collaborative networks and achieve real mission results.
Finally, past and present government executives offer strategies for systematically developing enterprise leaders. Taken together, these essays provide a way forward for a new cadre of officials better equipped to tackle government’s twenty-first-century wicked challenges”

Training Students to Extract Value from Big Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
New report by the National Research Council: “As the availability of high-throughput data-collection technologies, such as information-sensing mobile devices, remote sensing, internet log records, and wireless sensor networks has grown, science, engineering, and business have rapidly transitioned from striving to develop information from scant data to a situation in which the challenge is now that the amount of information exceeds a human’s ability to examine, let alone absorb, it. Data sets are increasingly complex, and this potentially increases the problems associated with such concerns as missing information and other quality concerns, data heterogeneity, and differing data formats.
The nation’s ability to make use of data depends heavily on the availability of a workforce that is properly trained and ready to tackle high-need areas. Training students to be capable in exploiting big data requires experience with statistical analysis, machine learning, and computational infrastructure that permits the real problems associated with massive data to be revealed and, ultimately, addressed. Analysis of big data requires cross-disciplinary skills, including the ability to make modeling decisions while balancing trade-offs between optimization and approximation, all while being attentive to useful metrics and system robustness. To develop those skills in students, it is important to identify whom to teach, that is, the educational background, experience, and characteristics of a prospective data-science student; what to teach, that is, the technical and practical content that should be taught to the student; and how to teach, that is, the structure and organization of a data-science program.
Training Students to Extract Value from Big Data summarizes a workshop convened in April 2014 by the National Research Council’s Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics to explore how best to train students to use big data. The workshop explored the need for training and curricula and coursework that should be included. One impetus for the workshop was the current fragmented view of what is meant by analysis of big data, data analytics, or data science. New graduate programs are introduced regularly, and they have their own notions of what is meant by those terms and, most important, of what students need to know to be proficient in data-intensive work. This report provides a variety of perspectives about those elements and about their integration into courses and curricula…”

Putting Government Data to Work

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

U.S. Department of Commerce Press Release: “The Governance Lab (GovLab) at New York University today released “Realizing The Potential of Open Government Data: A Roundtable with the U.S. Department of Commerce,” a report on findings and recommendations for ways the U.S. Commerce Department can improve its data management, dissemination and use. The report summarizes a June 2014 Open Data Roundtable, co-hosted by The GovLab and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with the Commerce Department, which brought together Commerce data providers and 25 representatives from the private sector and nonprofit organizations for an action-oriented dialogue on data issues and potential solutions. The GovLab is convening a series of other Open Data Roundtables in its mission to help make government more effective and connected to the public through technology.

“We were honored to work with the White House and the Department of Commerce to convene this event,” said Joel Gurin, senior advisor at The GovLab and project director of the Open Data 500 and the Roundtable Series. “The Department’s commitment to engaging with its data customers opens up great opportunities for public-private collaboration.”
Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Mark Doms said, “At the Commerce Department, we are only at the beginning of our open data effort. We share the goals and objectives embodied by the call of the Open Data 500: to deliver data that is valuable to industry and that provides greater economic opportunity for millions of Americans.” …”

CC Science → Sensored City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Citizen Sourced Data: “We routinely submit data to others and then worry about liberating the data from the silos. What if we could invert the model? What if collected data were first put into a completely free and open repository accessible to everyone so anyone could build applications with the data? What if the data itself were free so everyone could have an equal opportunity to create and even monetize their creativity? Funded by a generous grant from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we intend to do just that.
Partnering with Manylabs, a San Francisco-based sensor tools and education nonprofit, and Urban Matter, Inc., a Brooklyn-based design studio, and in collaboration with the City of Louisville, Kentucky, and Propeller Health, maker of a mobile platform for respiratory health management, we will design, develop and install a network of sensor-based hardware that will collect environmental information at high temporal and spatial scales and store it in a software platform designed explicitly for storing and retrieving such data.
Further, we will design, create and install a public data art installation that will be powered by the data we collect thereby communicating back to the public what has been collected about them.”

The Problem-solving Capacity of the Modern State

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Martin Lodge and Kai Wegrich: “The early 21st century has presented considerable challenges to the problem-solving capacity of the contemporary state in the industrialised world. Among the many uncertainties, anxieties and tensions, it is, however, the cumulative challenge of fiscal austerity, demographic developments, and climate change that presents the key test for contemporary states. Debates abound regarding the state’s ability to address these and other problems given increasingly dispersed forms of governing and institutional vulnerabilities created by politico-administrative and economic decision-making structures. This volume advances these debates, first, by moving towards a cross-sectoral perspective that takes into account the cumulative nature of the contemporary challenge to governance focusing on the key governance areas of infrastructure, sustainability, social welfare, and social integration; second, by considering innovations that have sought to add problem-solving capacity; and third, by exploring the kind of administrative capacities (delivery, regulatory, coordination, and analytical) required to encourage and sustain innovative problem-solving. This edition introduces a framework for understanding the four administrative capacities that are central to any attempt at problem-solving and how they enable the policy instruments of the state to have their intended effect. It also features chapters that focus on the way in which these capacities have become stretched and how they have been adjusted, given the changing conditions; the way in which different states have addressed particular governance challenges, with particular attention paid to innovation at the level of policy instrument and the required administrative capacities; and, finally, types of governance capacities that lie outside the boundaries of the state.”

A taxonomy of crowdsourcing based on task complexity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Robbie T. Nakatsu et al at the Journal of Information Science: “Although a great many different crowdsourcing approaches are available to those seeking to accomplish individual or organizational tasks, little research attention has yet been given to characterizing how those approaches might be based on task characteristics. To that end, we conducted an extensive review of the crowdsourcing landscape, including a look at what types of taxonomies are currently available. Our review found that no taxonomy explored the multidimensional nature of task complexity. This paper develops a taxonomy whose specific intent is the classification of approaches in terms of the types of tasks for which they are best suited. To develop this task-based taxonomy, we followed an iterative approach that considered over 100 well-known examples of crowdsourcing. The taxonomy considers three dimensions of task complexity: (a) task structure – is the task well-defined, or does it require a more open-ended solution; (2) task interdependence – can the task be solved by an individual, or does it require a community of problem solvers; and (3) task commitment – what level of commitment is expected from crowd members? Based on this taxonomy, we identify seven categories of crowdsourcing and discuss prototypical examples of each approach. Furnished with such an understanding, one should be able to determine which crowdsourcing approach is most suitable for a particular task situation.”

The Web Observatory: A Middle Layer for Broad Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Tiropanis Thanassis, Hall Wendy, Hendler James, and de Larrinaga Christian in Big Data: “The Web Observatory project1 is a global effort that is being led by the Web Science Trust,2 its network of WSTnet laboratories, and the wider Web Science community. The goal of this project is to create a global distributed infrastructure that will foster communities exchanging and using each other’s web-related datasets as well as sharing analytic applications for research and business web applications.3 It will provide the means to observe the digital planet, explore its processes, and understand their impact on different sectors of human activity.
The project is creating a network of separate web observatories, collections of datasets and tools for analyzing data about the Web and its use, each with their own use community. This allows researchers across the world to develop and share data, analytic approaches, publications related to their datasets, and tools (Fig. 1). The network of web observatories aims to bridge the gap that currently exists between big data analytics and the rapidly growing web of “broad data,”4 making it difficult for a large number of people to engage with them….”

New Data for a New Energy Future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

(This post originally appeared on the blog of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.)

Two growing concerns—climate change and U.S. energy self-sufficiency—have accelerated the search for affordable, sustainable approaches to energy production and use. In this area, as in many others, data-driven innovation is a key to progress. Data scientists are working to help improve energy efficiency and make new forms of energy more economically viable, and are building new, profitable businesses in the process.
In the same way that government data has been used by other kinds of new businesses, the Department of Energy is releasing data that can help energy innovators. At a recent “Energy Datapalooza” held by the department, John Podesta, counselor to the President, summed up the rationale: “Just as climate data will be central to helping communities prepare for climate change, energy data can help us reduce the harmful emissions that are driving climate change.” With electric power accounting for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the opportunities for improvement are great.
The GovLab has been studying the business applications of public government data, or “open data,” for the past year. The resulting study, the Open Data 500, now provides structured, searchable information on more than 500 companies that use open government data as a key business driver. A review of those results shows four major areas where open data is creating new business opportunities in energy and is likely to build many more in the near future.

Commercial building efficiency
Commercial buildings are major energy consumers, and energy costs are a significant business expense. Despite programs like LEED Certification, many commercial buildings waste large amounts of energy. Now a company called FirstFuel, based in Boston, is using open data to drive energy efficiency in these buildings. At the Energy Datapalooza, Swap Shah, the company’s CEO, described how analyzing energy data together with geospatial, weather, and other open data can give a very accurate view of a building’s energy consumption and ways to reduce it. (Sometimes the solution is startlingly simple: According to Shah, the largest source of waste is running heating and cooling systems at the same time.) Other companies are taking on the same kind of task – like Lucid, which provides an operating system that can track a building’s energy use in an integrated way.

Home energy use
A number of companies are finding data-driven solutions for homeowners who want to save money by reducing their energy usage. A key to success is putting together measurements of energy use in the home with public data on energy efficiency solutions. PlotWatt, for example, promises to help consumers “save money with real-time energy tracking” through the data it provides. One of the best-known companies in this area, Opower, uses a psychological strategy: it simultaneously gives people access to their own energy data and lets them compare their energy use to their neighbors’ as an incentive to save. Opower partners with utilities to provide this information, and the Virginia-based company has been successful enough to open offices in San Francisco, London, and Singapore. Soon more and more people will have access to data on their home energy use: Green Button, a government-promoted program implemented by utilities, now gives about 100 million Americans data about their energy consumption.

Solar power and renewable energy
As solar power becomes more efficient and affordable, a number of companies are emerging to support this energy technology. Clean Power Finance, for example, uses its database to connect solar entrepreneurs with sources of capital. In a different way, a company called Solar Census is analyzing publicly available data to find exactly where solar power can be produced most efficiently. The kind of analysis that used to require an on-site survey over several days can now be done in less than a minute with their algorithms.
Other kinds of geospatial and weather data can support other forms of renewable energy. The data will make it easier to find good sites for wind power stations, water sources for small-scale hydroelectric projects, and the best opportunities to tap geothermal energy.

Supporting new energy-efficient vehicles
The Tesla and other electric vehicles are becoming commercially viable, and we will soon see even more efficient vehicles on the road. Toyota has announced that its first fuel-cell cars, which run on hydrogen, will be commercially available by mid-2015, and other auto manufacturers have announced plans to develop fuel-cell vehicles as well. But these vehicles can’t operate without a network to supply power, be it electricity for a Tesla battery or hydrogen for a fuel cell.
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: People won’t buy large numbers of electric or fuel-cell cars unless they know they can power them, and power stations will be scarce until there are enough vehicles to support their business. Now some new companies are facilitating this transition by giving drivers data-driven tools to find and use the power sources they need. Recargo, for example, provides tools to help electric car owners find charging stations and operate their vehicles.
The development of new energy sources will involve solving social, political, economic, and technological issues. Data science can help develop solutions and bring us more quickly to a new kind of energy future.
Joel Gurin, senior advisor at the GovLab and project director, Open Data 500. He also currently serves as a fellow of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.