Covid-19: where is the data?

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has led many to argue that scholarly communication and publishing is undergoing a revolution, in terms of not only the wider opening of access to research, but also the data underlying it. In this post Julien Larrègue, Philippe Vincent-Lamarre, Frédéric Lebaron, and Vincent Larivière, discuss findings from their study of papers submitted to the preprint server medRxiv, which shows levels of open data to be stubbornly lo

Pulmonary Hypertension In Indonesia: Where and How is the Data? What is the Gaps?

Pulmonary Hypertension In Indonesia: Where and How is the Data? What is the Gaps

Global health security: where is the data to inform health system strengthening?

[Extract] The Ebola outbreak in West Africa (2013–2016) triggered a renewed interest and sense of urgency about global health security. A surge of reports and publications ensued, examining various aspects of emerging infectious disease outbreaks. In 2016, Olivero and colleagues published a biogeographical approach mapping favourable conditions that facilitated the Ebola outbreak, in terms of environmental factors and the presence of potential host animals.1 Constructing biological vulnerability maps has value to guide preparations for future emerging infectious disease outbreaks, especially in low-income and middle-income countries. But perhaps more important is the need to develop similar ‘vulnerability maps’ to capture the ability of health systems to prevent or respond to major infectious disease challenges. Without a health system vulnerability map, or the public availability of the data to generate it, efforts to achieve global health security in relation to emerging infectious disease outbreaks will likely be limited and post hoc, rather than pre-emptive and strategic. Unfortunately, the revived interest in global health security has not been matched with commensurate action. In 2014, the G7 (Group of Seven) endorsed the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), a partnership of governments and international organisations with the goal of accelerating the achievement of the core disease outbreak preparedness and response capacities as required by the International Health Regulations, but progress has been limited

Data, Information, and Knowledge: "where is the Life we have lost in living?"

This abstract attempts to raise the question of whether current practices in digital preservation properly address the issues of findability of digital objects. It is also intended as a starting point for discussing preservation of digital information in contrast to digital data. The abstract is exploratory and informal

The decolonial turn in data and technology research: what is at stake and where is it heading?

This article traces the emergence of a ‘decolonial turn’ in critical technology and data studies that analyzes the transformation of society through data extraction for profit. First, we offer a genealogy of concepts over the last decade from different fields related to this decolonial turn, including work that explores the connection between racism and data. Second, we discuss the commonalities and differences between these approaches and our own proposal, the data colonialism thesis (Couldry & Mejias, 2018, 2019) to clarify how, together, they provide a distinctive take on data and technology. Third, we summarize the most important advantages of the decolonial turn as a transhistorical tool to understand the continuities between colonialism and capitalism. Finally, some wider implications of a decolonial approach to data are explored, and broad theoretical and practical opportunities for resistance are identified

The analysis of data where response or selection is dependent on the variable of interest

In surveys of sensitive subjects non response may be dependent on the variable of interest, both at the unit and item levels. In some clinical and epidemiological studies, units are selected for entry on the basis of the outcome variable of interest. Both of these scenarios pose problems for statistical analysis, and standard techniques may be invalid or inefficient, except in some special cases. A new approach to the analysis of surveys of sensitive topics is developed, central to which is at least one variable which represents the enthusiasm to participate. This variable is included along with demographic variables in the calculation of a response propensity score. The score is derived as the fitted probabilities of item non-response to the question of interest. The distribution of the score for the unit non-responders is assumed equal to that of item non-responders. Response is assumed independent of the variable of interest, conditional on the score. Weights based on the score can be used to derive unbiased estimates of the distribution of the variable of interest. The bootstrap is recommended for confidence interval construction. The technique is applied to data from the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. A simplification of the technique is developed that does not use the bootstrap, and which enables users to analyse the data without knowledge of the factors affecting non-response, and using standard statistical software. To analyse the time from an initiating event to illness, a prospective study may be regarded as the optimal design. However, additional data from those already with the illness and still alive may also be available. A standard technique would be to ignore the additional data, and left-truncate the times to illness at study entry. We develop a full likelihood approach, and a weighted pseudo likelihood approach, and compare these with the standard truncated data approach. The techniques are used to fit simple models of time to illness based on data from a study of time to AIDS from HIV seroconversion

Tourism Market Segmentation using Big Data Approach: Where is the Next Non-Stop Destination?

Non-stop flights to a destination could reduce travel cost and increase visitor volumes. However, the airlines have to attract enough passengers to make those flights cost-effective. The identification of the next non-stop flying destination is one of the responsibilities of a Destination Marketing Organization (DMO). This paper develops a comprehensive model that encompasses the purchase funnel theory and the gravity model, which would help identify the potential markets for the next direct flight. Furthermore, the web traffic at the destination’s Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) is used as a proxy for each origin’s interest for the destination. This paper calculates the region’s potential to fly using multiple gravity models and compares actual visitors to the regions’ interest to the destination to find the most prospective markets. Theoretical background for the model and empirical evidence using the actual data of Charleston, South Carolina are provided for more thorough investigation

Home is Where the Lab is: A Comparison of Online and Lab Data From a Time-sensitive Study of Interruption

While experiments have been run online for some time with positive results, there are still outstanding questions about the kinds of tasks that can be successfully deployed to remotely situated online participants. Some tasks, such as menu selection, have worked well but these do not represent the gamut of tasks that interest HCI researchers. In particular, we wondered whether long-lasting, time-sensitive tasks that require continuous concentration could work successfully online, given the confounding effects that might accompany the online deployment of such a task. We ran an archetypal interruption experiment both online and in the lab to investigate whether studies demonstrating such characteristics might be more vulnerable to a loss of control than the short, time-insensitive studies that are representative of the majority of previous online studies. Statistical comparisons showed no significant differences in performance on a number of dimensions. However, there were issues with data quality that stemmed from participants misunderstanding the task. Our findings suggest that long-lasting experiments using time-sensitive performance measures can be run online but that care must be taken when introducing participants to experimental procedures