University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

In between complaining about the lack of open data in biodiversity
(especially taxonomy), and scraping data from various web sites to build
stuff I\'m interested in, I occasionally end up having interesting
conversations with the people whose data I\'ve been scraping, cleaning,
cross-linking, and otherwise messing with.

Yesterday I had one of those conversations at Kew Gardens. Kew is a
large institution that is adjusting to a reduced budget, a changing
ditigal landscape, and a rethinking of it\'s science priorities. Much of
Kew\'s data has not been easily accessible to the outside world, but
this is changing. Part of the reason for this is that Defra, which
part-funds Kew, is itself opening up (see [Ellen
Broad\'s](https://twitter.com/ellenbroad) fascinating post [Lasers,
hedgehogs and the rise of the Age of Yoghurt: reflections on
\#OpenDefra](https://medium.com/@ellenbroad/lasers-hedgehogs-and-the-rise-of-the-age-of-yoghurt-reflections-on-opendefra-81d8b462116)).

During this conversation I was asked \"Why didn\'t you just ask for the
data instead of scraping it? We would most likely have given it to
you.\" My response to this was \"well, you might have said no\". In my
experience saying \"no\" is easy because it is almost always the less
risky approach. And I want a world where we don\'t have to ask for data,
in the same way that we don\'t ask to get source code for open source
software, and we don\'t ask to download genomic data from GenBank. We
just do it and, hopefully, do cool things with it. Just as importantly,
if things don\'t work out and we fail to make cool things, we haven\'t
wasted time negotiating access for something that ultimately didn\'t
work out. The time I lose is simply the time I\'ve spent playing with
the data, not any time negotiating access. The more obstacles you put in
front of people playing with your data, the fewer innovative uses of
that data you\'re likely to get.

But it was pointed out to me that a consequence of just going ahead and
getting the data anyway is that it doesn\'t necessarily help people
within an organisation make the case for being open. The more requests
for access to data that are made, the easier it might be to say \"people
want this data, lets work to make it open\". Put another way, by getting
the data I want regardless, I sidestep the challenge of convincing
people to open up their data. It solves my problem (I want the data now)
but doesn\'t solve it for the wider community (enabling everyone to have
access).

I think this is a fair point, but I\'m going to try and wiggle away from
it. From a purely selfish perspective, my time is limited, there are
only so many things I can do, and making the political case for opening
up specific data sets is not something I really want to be doing. In a
sense, I\'m more interested in what happens when the data is open. In
other words, let\'s assume the battle for open has been won, what do we
then? So, I\'m essentially operating as if the data is already open
because I\'m betting that it will be at some point in time.

Without wishing to be too self-serving, I think there are ways that
treating closed data as effectively open can help make the case that the
data should (genuinely) open. For example, one argument for being open
is that people will come along and do cool things with the data. In my
case, \"cool\" means cross linking taxonomic names with the primary
literature, eventually to original decsriptions and fundamental data
about the organisms tagged with the taxonomic names (you may feel that
this stretches the definitoon of \"cool\" somewhat). But adding value to
data is hard work, and takes time (in some cases I\'ve invested years in
cleaning and linking the data). The benefits from being open may take
time, especially if the data is messy, or relatively niche so that few
people are prepared to invest the time necessary to do the work.

Some data, such as the examples given in [Lasers, hedgehogs and the rise
of the Age of Yoghurt: reflections on
\#OpenDefra](https://medium.com/@ellenbroad/lasers-hedgehogs-and-the-rise-of-the-age-of-yoghurt-reflections-on-opendefra-81d8b462116)
will likely be snapped up and give rise to nice visualisations, but a
lot of data won\'t. So, imagine that you\'re making the case for data to
be open, and one of your arguments is \"people will do cool things with
it\", eventually you win that argument, the data is opened up\... and
nothing happens. Wouldn\'t it be better if once the data is open, those
of us who have been beavering away with \"illicit\" copies of the data
can come out of the woodwork and say \"by the way, here are some cool
things we\'ve been doing with that data\"? OK, this is a fairly
self-serving argument, but my point is that while internal arguments
about being open are going on I have three choices:

1.  Wait until you open the data (which stops me doing the work I want
    to do)
2.  Help make the case for being open (which means I engage in politics,
    an area in which I have zero aptitude)
3.  Assume you will be open eventually, and do the work I want to do so
    that when you\'re open I can share that work with you, and everyone
    else

Call me selfish, but I choose option 3.


In between complaining about the lack of open data in biodiversity (especially taxonomy), and scraping data from various web sites to build stuff I'm interested in, I occasionally end up having interesting conversations with the people whose data I've been scraping, cleaning, cross-linking, and otherwise messing with. Yesterday I had one of those conversations at Kew Gardens.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

On asking for access to data