Sara Fine Institute presents: Christine Borgman, "Big Data, Open Data, and Scholarship": Mon Feb 29th 3.00pm - 5.00pm, University of Pittsburgh

Sara Fine Institute presents: Christine Borgman, "Big Data, Open Data, and Scholarship" :

"Monday Feb 29th 3.00pm - 5.00pm

University Club, Ballroom A, 123 University Pl, Pittsburgh, PA 15260

"Big Data, Open Data, and Scholarship"

by Christine L. Borgman

Distinguished Professor & Presidential Chair in Information Studies

University of California, Los Angeles

Scholars gathered data long before the emergence of books, journals, libraries, publishers, or the Internet. Until recently, data were considered part of the process of scholarship, essential but largely invisible. In the “big data” era, the products of these research processes have become valuable objects in themselves to be captured, shared, reused, and sustained for the long term. Data also has become contentious intellectual property to be protected, whether for proprietary, confidentiality, competition, or other reasons. Public policy leans toward open access to research data, but rarely with the public investment necessary to sustain access. Enthusiasm for big data is obscuring the complexity and diversity of data in scholarship and the challenges for stewardship. Data practices are local, varying from field to field, individual to individual, and country to country. This talk will explore the stakes and stakeholders in research data and implications for policy and practice.

Join us Feb. 29, 2016 at 3pm at the University of Pittsburgh’s University Club (Ballroom A). This event is free to attend and no RSVP is required. A reception will follow."

Fair Use Week at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries: February 22-26, 2016

Fair Use Week at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries: February 22-26, 2016:

Thanks to Pitt SIS alumnus Andy Prisbylla with CMU Libraries for this information on CMU's Fair Use Week, February 22-26, 2016: "CMU will be having student demonstrations of work that incorporates Fair Use and a digital exhibit will be playing on the flat-screens here as well."

Google gets patents for advanced Glass and a driverless delivery truck; ComputerWorld, 2/18/16

Sharon Gaudin, ComputerWorld; Google gets patents for advanced Glass and a driverless delivery truck:

"Google is working on advancing its Google Glass technology, while also working on the concept of a driverless delivery truck.

Google, which holds a myriad of patents, was recently granted two U.S. patents, one for a more rugged and flexible version of its computerized eyewear, and another for an autonomous delivery truck."

Librarians Find Themselves Caught Between Journal Pirates and Publishers; Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/18/16

Corinne Ruff, Chronicle of Higher Education; Librarians Find Themselves Caught Between Journal Pirates and Publishers:

"The rise, fall, and resurfacing of a popular piracy website for scholarly-journal articles, Sci-Hub, has highlighted tensions between academic librarians and scholarly publishers.

Academics are increasingly turning to websites like Sci-Hub to view subscriber-only articles that they cannot obtain at their college or that they need more quickly than interlibrary loan can provide.

That trend puts librarians in an awkward position. While many are proponents of open access and understand the challenges scholars face in gaining access to information, they are also bound by their contracts with publishers, which obligate them to crack down on pirates. And while few, if any, librarians openly endorse piracy, many believe that the scholarly-publishing system is broken."

Marvell Technology to Pay Carnegie Mellon $750 Million Over Patents; Reuters via New York Times, 2/17/16

Reuters via New York Times; Marvell Technology to Pay Carnegie Mellon $750 Million Over Patents:

"Marvell Technology Group Ltd on Wednesday said it will pay Carnegie Mellon University $750 million to settle a nearly seven-year-old lawsuit accusing it of infringing two hard disk drive patents held by the Pittsburgh school.

The accord was announced six months after a federal appeals court said an earlier $1.54 billion damages award against the chipmaker should be reduced significantly and that a new trial be held, but that Marvell must pay at least $278.4 million...

Carnegie Mellon had sued Marvell in March 2009 over patents issued that related to how accurately hard disk drive circuits read data from high-speed magnetic disks.

The university said at least nine Marvell circuit devices incorporated the patents, which were issued in 2001 and 2002, letting the company sell billions of chips without permission."

Balancing Benefits and Risks of Immortal Data Participants’ Views of Open Consent in the Personal Genome Project; Hastings Center Report, 12/17/15

Oscar A. Zarate, Julia Green Brody, Phil Brown, Monica D. Ramirez-Andreotta, Laura Perovich andJacob Matz, Hastings Center Report; Balancing Benefits and Risks of Immortal Data: Participants’ Views of Open Consent in the Personal Genome Project:

"Abstract

An individual's health, genetic, or environmental-exposure data, placed in an online repository, creates a valuable shared resource that can accelerate biomedical research and even open opportunities for crowd-sourcing discoveries by members of the public. But these data become “immortalized” in ways that may create lasting risk as well as benefit. Once shared on the Internet, the data are difficult or impossible to redact, and identities may be revealed by a process called data linkage, in which online data sets are matched to each other. Reidentification (re-ID), the process of associating an individual's name with data that were considered deidentified, poses risks such as insurance or employment discrimination, social stigma, and breach of the promises often made in informed-consent documents. At the same time, re-ID poses risks to researchers and indeed to the future of science, should re-ID end up undermining the trust and participation of potential research participants.

The ethical challenges of online data sharing are heightened as so-called big data becomes an increasingly important research tool and driver of new research structures. Big data is shifting research to include large numbers of researchers and institutions as well as large numbers of participants providing diverse types of data, so the participants’ consent relationship is no longer with a person or even a research institution. In addition, consent is further transformed because big data analysis often begins with descriptive inquiry and generation of a hypothesis, and the research questions cannot be clearly defined at the outset and may be unforeseeable over the long term. In this article, we consider how expanded data sharing poses new challenges, illustrated by genomics and the transition to new models of consent. We draw on the experiences of participants in an open data platform—the Personal Genome Project—to allow study participants to contribute their voices to inform ethical consent practices and protocol reviews for big-data research."

Without Copyright Infringement, Deadpool Doesn't Get Made; TechDirt.com, 2/16/16

Tim Cushing, TechDirt.com; Without Copyright Infringement, Deadpool Doesn't Get Made:

"Sure, leaking test footage isn't like leaking an entire film, but without that happening, nothing else does. The movie is never made and Fox doesn't have almost three times the budget grossed within the first four days of ticket sales. But because this leak happened, the studio is likely in control of a promising franchise, provided it can keep the lightning bottled and push forward without discarding everything that makes Deadpool Deadpool. And everyone involved can thank the unnamed person they won't rat out for shrugging off the insular "power" of copyright and mobilizing a fan base that is now making good on its promise to support the movie."