An Open Context for Near Eastern Archaeology

The common use by archaeologists of ubiquitous technologies such as computers and digital cameras means that archaeological research projects now produce huge amounts of diverse, digital documentation. However, while the technology is available to collect this documentation, we still largely lack community-accepted dissemination channels appropriate for such torrents of data. Open Context aims to help fill this gap by providing open access data publication services for archaeology. Open Context has a flexible and generalized technical architecture that can accommodate most archaeological datasets, despite the lack of common recording systems or other documentation standards. It includes a variety of tools to make data dissemination easier and more worthwhile. Authorship is clearly identified through citation tools, including web-based publication systems that enable individuals to upload their own data for review, and collaboration is facilitated through easy download and "tagging" features. Near Eastern archaeologists will benefit from Open Context's flexibility to share a variety of content from diverse projects, no matter how large or small. This article was originally published in Near Eastern Archaeology (ISSN 1094-2076), Volume 70, Number 4, December 2007

Citation and peer review of data: moving towards formal data publication

This paper discusses many of the issues associated with formally publishing data in academia, focusing primarily on the structures that need to be put in place for peer review and formal citation of datasets. Data publication is becoming increasingly important to the scientific community, as it will provide a mechanism for those who create data to receive academic credit for their work and will allow the conclusions arising from an analysis to be more readily verifiable, thus promoting transparency in the scientific process. Peer review of data will also provide a mechanism for ensuring the quality of datasets, and we provide suggestions on the types of activities one expects to see in the peer review of data. A simple taxonomy of data publication methodologies is presented and evaluated, and the paper concludes with a discussion of dataset granularity, transience and semantics, along with a recommended human-readable citation syntax

The effectiveness of DNA databases in relation to their purpose and content : a systematic review

Different stakeholders use forensic DNA databases for different purposes; for example, law enforcement agencies use them as an investigative tool to identify suspects, and criminologists use them to study the offending patterns of unidentified suspects. A number of researchers have already studied their effectiveness, but none has performed an overview of the relevant literature. Such an overview could help future researchers and policymakers by evaluating their creation, use and expansion. Using a systematic review, this article synthesizes the most relevant research into the effectiveness of forensic DNA databases published between January 1985 and March 2018. We report the results of the selected studies and look deeper into the evidence by evaluating the relationship between the purpose, content, and effectiveness of DNA databases, three inseparable elements in this type of research. We classify the studies by purposes: (i) detection and clearance; (ii) deterrence; and (iii) criminological scientific knowledge. Each category uses different measurements to evaluate effectiveness. The majority of these studies report positive results, supporting the assumption that DNA databases are an effective tool for the police, society, and criminologists. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Bibliographic Resources for Literature Searches on J.R.R Tolkien

This guide is designed to help the student, scholar, or thesis writer begin an in-depth literature search on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. This guide is geared towards the English-speaking, North American user, but I have attempted to include European sources as well when I am aware of them. As this is a field friendly to independent scholars not attached to a university or college, I am addressing their information needs as well

Surfacing the deep data of taxonomy

Taxonomic databases are perpetuating approaches to citing literature that may have been appropriate before the Internet, often being little more than digitised 5 × 3 index cards. Typically the original taxonomic literature is either not cited, or is represented in the form of a (typically abbreviated) text string. Hence much of the “deep data” of taxonomy, such as the original descriptions, revisions, and nomenclatural actions are largely hidden from all but the most resourceful users. At the same time there are burgeoning efforts to digitise the scientific literature, and much of this newly available content has been assigned globally unique identifiers such as Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), which are also the identifier of choice for most modern publications. This represents an opportunity for taxonomic databases to engage with digitisation efforts. Mapping the taxonomic literature on to globally unique identifiers can be time consuming, but need be done only once. Furthermore, if we reuse existing identifiers, rather than mint our own, we can start to build the links between the diverse data that are needed to support the kinds of inference which biodiversity informatics aspires to support. Until this practice becomes widespread, the taxonomic literature will remain balkanized, and much of the knowledge that it contains will linger in obscurity