17,538 research outputs found
e-Social Science and Evidence-Based Policy Assessment : Challenges and Solutions
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Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier
As universities recognize the inherent value in the data they collect and
hold, they encounter unforeseen challenges in stewarding those data in ways
that balance accountability, transparency, and protection of privacy, academic
freedom, and intellectual property. Two parallel developments in academic data
collection are converging: (1) open access requirements, whereby researchers
must provide access to their data as a condition of obtaining grant funding or
publishing results in journals; and (2) the vast accumulation of 'grey data'
about individuals in their daily activities of research, teaching, learning,
services, and administration. The boundaries between research and grey data are
blurring, making it more difficult to assess the risks and responsibilities
associated with any data collection. Many sets of data, both research and grey,
fall outside privacy regulations such as HIPAA, FERPA, and PII. Universities
are exploiting these data for research, learning analytics, faculty evaluation,
strategic decisions, and other sensitive matters. Commercial entities are
besieging universities with requests for access to data or for partnerships to
mine them. The privacy frontier facing research universities spans open access
practices, uses and misuses of data, public records requests, cyber risk, and
curating data for privacy protection. This paper explores the competing values
inherent in data stewardship and makes recommendations for practice, drawing on
the pioneering work of the University of California in privacy and information
security, data governance, and cyber risk.Comment: Final published version, Sept 30, 201
The case for cloud service trustmarks and assurance-as-a-service
Cloud computing represents a significant economic opportunity for Europe. However, this growth is threatened by adoption barriers largely related to trust. This position paper examines trust and confidence issues in cloud computing and advances a case for addressing them through the implementation of a novel trustmark scheme for cloud service providers. The proposed trustmark would be both active and dynamic featuring multi-modal information about the performance of the underlying cloud service. The trustmarks would be informed by live performance data from the cloud service provider, or ideally an independent third-party accountability and assurance service that would communicate up-to-date information relating to service performance and dependability. By combining assurance measures with a remediation scheme, cloud service providers could both signal dependability to customers and the wider marketplace and provide customers, auditors and regulators with a mechanism for determining accountability in the event of failure or non-compliance. As a result, the trustmarks would convey to consumers of cloud services and other stakeholders that strong assurance and accountability measures are in place for the service in question and thereby address trust and confidence issues in cloud computing
Metadata enrichment for digital heritage: users as co-creators
This paper espouses the concept of metadata enrichment through an expert and user-focused approach to metadata creation and management. To this end, it is argued the Web 2.0 paradigm enables users to be proactive metadata creators. As Shirky (2008, p.47) argues Web 2.0’s social tools enable “action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive”. Lagoze (2010, p. 37) advises, “the participatory nature of Web 2.0 should not be dismissed as just a popular phenomenon [or fad]”. Carletti (2016) proposes a participatory digital cultural heritage approach where Web 2.0 approaches such as crowdsourcing can be sued to enrich digital cultural objects. It is argued that “heritage crowdsourcing, community-centred projects or other forms of public participation”. On the other hand, the new collaborative approaches of Web 2.0 neither negate nor replace contemporary standards-based metadata approaches. Hence, this paper proposes a mixed metadata approach where user created metadata augments expert-created metadata and vice versa. The metadata creation process no longer remains to be the sole prerogative of the metadata expert. The Web 2.0 collaborative environment would now allow users to participate in both adding and re-using metadata. The case of expert-created (standards-based, top-down) and user-generated metadata (socially-constructed, bottom-up) approach to metadata are complementary rather than mutually-exclusive. The two approaches are often mistakenly considered as dichotomies, albeit incorrectly (Gruber, 2007; Wright, 2007) .
This paper espouses the importance of enriching digital information objects with descriptions pertaining the about-ness of information objects. Such richness and diversity of description, it is argued, could chiefly be achieved by involving users in the metadata creation process. This paper presents the importance of the paradigm of metadata enriching and metadata filtering for the cultural heritage domain. Metadata enriching states that a priori metadata that is instantiated and granularly structured by metadata experts is continually enriched through socially-constructed (post-hoc) metadata, whereby users are pro-actively engaged in co-creating metadata. The principle also states that metadata that is enriched is also contextually and semantically linked and openly accessible. In addition, metadata filtering states that metadata resulting from implementing the principle of enriching should be displayed for users in line with their needs and convenience. In both enriching and filtering, users should be considered as prosumers, resulting in what is called collective metadata intelligence
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