Open Data: A Question of (Panton) Principles

Since I have been banging on about the need for open data in science for some time, you won't be surprised to learn that I am in agreement with the following:

Science is based on building on, reusing and openly criticising the published body of scientific knowledge.

For science to effectively function, and for society to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavours, it is crucial that science data be made open.

By open data in science we mean that it is freely available on the public internet permitting any user to download, copy, analyse, re-process, pass them to software or use them for any other purpose without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. To this end data related to published science should be explicitly placed in the public domain.

They form the basis of the newly-formalised Panton Principles for open data in science, and are followed by the four short principles themselves - essentially that there should be an explicit statement of what may be done with the data, and that ideally that data should bein the public domain.

The principles derive their name from the Panton Arms on Panton Street in Cambridge - destined, perhaps, to pass into science history rather as the Eagle pub did 50 years ago.

But given that provenance, and the fact that 75% of the authors of the Principles are British, it's a shame they couldn't spell the word "licence" properly. Sorry for the nit-picking, but it's a question of, er, principle for me...

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Open Source Social Documentation for Museums

Again, open source reaches ever-new bits:

The new MAA Documentation System combines open-source technologies with deep social computing principles to create a truly innovative approach to museum documentation. The new MAA Documentation System shifts the age-old documentation principles of standardized description and information accumulation to multi-vocal and multi-source accounts and distributed documentation.

For the past few years, the MAA has been developing an open-source Documentation System. With over 20 years experience of developing its own Documentation Systems and Collections Management Systems, the MAA is just about to finish one of the most ambitious upgrades of its history. In fact, this system is the result of a complete re-think of its documentation practices. Thought the new system takes account of documentation standards, such as SPECTRUM, and newer developments such as CollectionSpace, it differs from the traditional approaches is several key respects.

And if that isn't wonderful enough, this new project comes from Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology - known to its friends as Arch and Anth. Its old, Victorian(?) building was one of the most atmospheric places in Cambridge.

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Light Blue Rebel Code

Cambridge University is celebrating its 800th anniversary in 2009. The official history tells the tale of the buildings; but what about the ideas?

Down through the years, Oxford has produced many powerful men and Cambridge many iconoclasts – scientists, philosophers and revolutionaries. The polarisation is by no means total: Oxford's alumni include the reformer John Wyclif and the father of economics Adam Smith, while ours include the Prime Minister Charles Grey, who abolished slavery and passed the Great Reform Bill. But we've long produced more of the rebels; way back in the Civil War, for example, we were parliamentarian while Oxford was royalist. Why should this be?

Read on for the rest of this splendidly iconoclastic history of Cambridge University by Ross Anderson, a man who managed a fair bit of iconoclasm in his undergraduate days, as I recall.... (Via John Naughton.)

The Economics of Security

In his lastest Wired column, Bruce S. is writing about a subject particularly dear to my heart: the economics of security. He was lucky enough to go up to the fifth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security at Cambridge: I had hoped to go, but a sudden influx of work prevented me.

My own interest in this area was sparked by a talk that Ross Anderson, now a professor at Cambridge, gave down in London. I vaguely knew Ross at university, when both of us had rather more hair than we do now. Since this was 30 years ago, it's not suprising that he didn't remember me when I introduced myself at the London talk, pointing out that the last time I had seen him was in Whewell's Court: he stared at me as if I was completely bonkers. Ah well.

Schneier gives a good summary of what this whole area is about, and why it is so important:

We generally think of computer security as a problem of technology, but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives: The people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the costs of failure.

When you start looking, economic considerations are everywhere in computer security. Hospitals' medical-records systems provide comprehensive billing-management features for the administrators who specify them, but are not so good at protecting patients' privacy. Automated teller machines suffered from fraud in countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, where poor regulation left banks without sufficient incentive to secure their systems, and allowed them to pass the cost of fraud along to their customers. And one reason the internet is insecure is that liability for attacks is so diffuse.

Read the whole column, and then, if you are feeling strong, try Ross's seminal essay on the subject: "Why Information Security Is Hard -- An Economic Perspective".

Not Your Father's/Mother's Tripos

At Cambridge University, the examinations are known as the Tripos - a reference, it is thought, to the three-legged wooden stool that candidates originally sat on during their orals.

Now the P2P Foundation has come up with another "three-legged stool", one of whose legs (number 2: open "everything") is not a million miles from the page you are reading. Great minds, etc.