A Study of Data Sharing Practices within Scholarly Research Communities

Recent literature acknowledges the importance of data and effective data management strategies to facilitate collaboration between disciplines of research. Likewise, understanding the policies and practices that support data sharing is a growing area of research in the fields of information and social studies of science. Shared data allow researchers to build on fellow researchers’ work to enrich and facilitate advancements in science. While much has been written to identify the elements that adversely affect data sharing in scholarly research, a definitive framework remains unclear. Several theories have been presented to explain this shortfall; however, the reasons are highly diverse. Some suggest the factors that impact data sharing practices include delays in the peer review process, ineffective data management practices, mistrust, financial considerations, and vague data sharing policies and procedures. Those who support data sharing have acknowledged the important role of funding agencies to leverage the sharing of data in scholarly research in return for researcher support. Likewise, advocates suggest that scientific societies should establish data sharing as standard procedure. Respected organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Science Foundation (NSF), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) are tasked with developing modern strategies to ensure that policies and procedures regarding data management and dissemination meet the evolving needs and computational capabilities of the 21st century. While the NSF has proposed recent, updated regulations to guide the scientific community to adopt a culture that promotes the sharing of research data, literature suggests that regulations have been ineffective in advancing data sharing practices. The purpose of this research study was to review the NSF federal grant application process and its influence on timely data sharing practices. Most importantly, the goal of this study was to identify definitive ways in which the NSF grant application process may be improved to expedite the sharing of research data in the future

Electronic Evidence and Electronic Signatures

In this updated edition of the well-established practitioner text, Stephen Mason and Daniel Seng have brought together a team of experts in the field to provide an exhaustive treatment of electronic evidence and electronic signatures. This fifth edition continues to follow the tradition in English evidence text books by basing the text on the law of England and Wales, with appropriate citations of relevant case law and legislation from other jurisdictions. Stephen Mason (of the Middle Temple, Barrister) is a leading authority on electronic evidence and electronic signatures, having advised global corporations and governments on these topics. He is also the editor of International Electronic Evidence (British Institute of International and Comparative Law 2008), and he founded the innovative international open access journal Digital Evidence and Electronic Signatures Law Review in 2004. Daniel Seng (Associate Professor, National University of Singapore) is the Director of the Centre for Technology, Robotics, AI and the Law (TRAIL). He teaches and researches information technology law and evidence law. Daniel was previously a partner and head of the technology practice at Messrs Rajah & Tann. He is also an active consultant to the World Intellectual Property Organization, where he has researched, delivered papers and published monographs on copyright exceptions for academic institutions, music copyright in the Asia Pacific and the liability of Internet intermediaries

Exploring Strategies to Prevent Harm from Web Search

Web search, the process of seeking and finding information online, is an ubiquitous activity engrained in the lives of many individuals and much of broader society. This activity, which has brought many benefits to individuals and society, has also opened the door to many harms, such as echo chambers, loss of privacy and exposure to misinformation. Members of the information retrieval (IR) community now recognize the dangers of the search technologies commonplace in our daily lives. The upshot of this recognition are growing efforts to address these dangers by the IR community. These efforts focus heavily on system oriented solutions, but give limited focus on behavioural and cognitive biases and behaviours of the search and even less attention to interventions designed to address these biases and behaviours. As such, a theoretical framework is proposed, with behavioural and cognitive strategies as a core component of interactive Web search environments designed to minimize harm. Using the framework as the foundation, this thesis presents a number of offline and online studies to evaluate nudging, a popular intervention strategy rooted in the field of behavioural economics, and boosting, a successful intervention strategy from the cognitive sciences, as strategies to reduce risk of harm in Web search. Overall the studies produce findings in line with the theories underlying the behavioural and cognitive strategies considered. The key takeaway from these studies being that both boosting and nudging should be considered as viable approaches for harm prevention in Web search environments, in addition to pure system and algorithmic solutions. Additional contributions of this thesis include methods of study design for the comparison of multiple paradigms that promote improved decision making, along with a set of evaluation metrics to measure the success of the IR system and user performance as they relate to the harms being prevented. Future research is needed to confirm the effectiveness of these strategies for other types of harms

B!SON: A Tool for Open Access Journal Recommendation

Finding a suitable open access journal to publish scientific work is a complex task: Researchers have to navigate a constantly growing number of journals, institutional agreements with publishers, funders’ conditions and the risk of Predatory Publishers. To help with these challenges, we introduce a web-based journal recommendation system called B!SON. It is developed based on a systematic requirements analysis, built on open data, gives publisher-independent recommendations and works across domains. It suggests open access journals based on title, abstract and references provided by the user. The recommendation quality has been evaluated using a large test set of 10,000 articles. Development by two German scientific libraries ensures the longevity of the project

Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law

This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Education data futures: critical, regulatory and practical reflections

The data collected from children at or through their participation in school are exponentially increasing in variety, velocity and volume. But whose interests are served by this ‘datafication’ of education and childhood? This essay collection offers critical, practical and creative reflections that identify exciting possibilities for beneficial uses of children’s education data as well as tackling the exploitative uses or misuse of such data. Collectively, the essays set out principled yet practical proposals for our children’s education data futures

Transforming Conservation

There are severe problems with the decision-making processes currently widely used, leading to ineffective use of evidence, faulty decisions, wasting of resources and the erosion of public and political support. In this book an international team of experts provide solutions. The transformation suggested includes rethinking how evidence is assessed, combined, communicated and used in decision-making; using effective methods when asking experts to make judgements (i.e. avoiding just asking an expert or a group of experts!); using a structured process for making decisions that incorporate the evidence and having effective processes for learning from actions. In each case, the specific problem with decision making is described with a range of practical solutions. Adopting this approach to decision-making requires societal change so detailed suggestions are made for transforming organisations, governments, businesses, funders and philanthropists. The practical suggestions include twelve downloadable checklists. The vision of the authors is to transform conservation so it is more effective, more cost-efficient, learns from practice and is more attractive to funders. However, the lessons of this important book go well beyond conservation to decision-makers in any field