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

1. 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 EDINA David Medyckyj-Scott, Research & Geo-data Services Team Manager UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2009: Sharing & Collaboration Wednesday 9th December 2009

2. 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.

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

4. 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. Digimap Users

5. 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.

6. Examples of types of Geospatial data in ShareGeo GPS Land -use DTM Boundaries Grids Derived OS data Imagery

7. 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.

8. Derived Data & Licenses

9. Publish Metadata in Go-Geo! using GeoDoc

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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

13. 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.“

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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.

17. 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. Gicentre, City University London - demo by Jo Wood: http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~jwo/processing/gpsTracks/

18. 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.

19. 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/

20. References • 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 • 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. • Mozilla. (2009). Our Contributors. Accessed 2nd December 2009: http://www.mozilla.org/credits/ • 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.html • Wikimedia (2009). Wikimedia Monthly Report Card (October 2009). Accessed 2nd December 2009:http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/#fragment-63 • OpenStreetMap (2009). Stats – OpenStreetMap. Accessed 3rd December 2009: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats • 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 • 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 • 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 • BBC (2005). Election 2005: Results. Accessed 1st December 2009: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/constituencies/default.stm. • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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