The Case for International Sharing of Scientific Data A Focus on Developing Countries: Proceedings of a Symposium (2012) / Chapter Skim
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PART FOUR: THE LIMITS AND BARRIERS TO DATA SHARING
PART FOUR: THE LIMITS AND BARRIERS TO DATA SHARING
Pages 73-96
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From page 74... ...
Following political independence, especially on the African continent, during the first part of the 1960s, members of the Non-Aligned Movement strived for economic and cultural liberation from the North, which could be seen as synonymous to the West in those days. For that purpose it propagated two initiatives during the first half of the 1970s, namely the New International Economic Order and the New International Information Order.
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From page 75... ...
America 88 95 98 Oceania 64 44 46 Africa 14 16 14 UN Statistical Yearbook; UNESCO Statistical Yearbook. Another statistical figure indicating the underprivileged access of developing countries to information is the low number of television receivers per one thousand habitants.
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From page 76... ...
was established in 2008 to inter alia, enable universal and equitable access to quality-assured scientific data, data services, products, and information. The WDS is being built on the foundation of two earlier international networks that were established in the context of the International Geophysical Year in 1958 -- the World Data Centers and the Federation of Astronomical and Geophysical Data Analysis Services.
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From page 77... ...
National Academies, which forms the basis for the present publication. To further raise awareness among the global scientific community for these concerns, the CFRS issued an Advisory Note on the matter following this scientific meeting1 1 The CFRS Advisory Note is available in Appendix C and at http://www.icsu.org/publications/cfrs-statements.
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From page 78... ...
Often their very existence is difficult to determine, particularly in scientific areas. Some of the other issues relate to the actual characteristics of data, including semantics or meaning of the data, for example: • What are the elements and what are the fields in the data, and what do they mean?
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From page 79... ...
Some of the technical aspects relate not only to having standards for all these data quality measures, but also to being able to share the format so you can actually share the information electronically. Or if you are going to share it on paper in human-readable form, it again depends on what language it is in.
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From page 80... ...
Public health data are critical to share in order to prevent public health outbreaks, but such data also can affect the reputation of countries and institutions. Some of this is cultural.
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From page 81... ...
There was a need to develop advanced capabilities and create an infrastructure that had certain characteristics to serve those missions. This led to the creation of Internet2, which has become a global activity.
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From page 82... ...
In the United States, we have state-based regional optical networks that all tie into this big backbone, and with the Obama administration Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program, we are now talking about reaching out and creating "community anchor" networks in, for example, rural areas and inner cities and in other areas that need improved broadband access -- that then tie into this new universal community-access publicpurpose backbone. My next message concerns NRENs.
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From page 83... ...
They also concluded that where NRENs do not exist, it hampers development and can exclude countries from achieving advances that could help their economic development. If we look at the Global Lambda Integrated Facility, which is a global research platform for advanced applications, they have multiple 10-gigabyte-per-second links, a level of connectivity that gives it the capability of shared and collaborative research, connecting different parts of the world, with one such connection to Africa in South Africa.
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From page 84... ...
Working across all these countries, there are many issues to consider: technical aspects, the lack of human resources, and financial undersourcing, along with high cost, uneven development, and insufficient governmental support. Additionally, we are faced with the high costs of connectivity; network and equipment costs; inefficient use of established networks; an uneven development of technological infrastructure related to the different sectors; and insufficient governmental and administrative support for the development of information and communication technology infrastructure.
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From page 85... ...
PART FOUR: LIMITS AND BARRIERS TO DATA SHARING 85 that were specifically targeted toward governments, including things that they ought to do, and things that those of us in research and educational organizations can do as well.
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From page 86... ...
It spanned 2 years, because it takes a lot of time to actually do a year's worth of work in the polar regions, and if you are going to do it in the North and the South, it takes 2 years. They convened a joint science committee to set the overall goals, and the committee immediately adopted the most advanced free and open data access policy.
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From page 87... ...
Polar science involves huge infrastructure, such as ice breakers and bases in Antarctica. However, they are very expensive.
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From page 88... ...
Canada built a relatively good interdisciplinary data portal for IPY. It does not cover satellite data or public health data, but it covers much of the range of what we would call earth science data.
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From page 89... ...
It takes this kind of breadth to do modern science, but when we do this, we are going to have to bring the international, national, and individual data behaviors up to a new standard as well. We like to say IPY polar science has had global impact.
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From page 90... ...
as a vector for recombinant vaccines to express the protective proteins of the rinderpest virus. Using vaccinia virus as a vector, we developed several vaccines for rinderpest; the first paper demonstrating the safety and efficacy of this vaccine was published in the journal Science in 1988.
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From page 91... ...
What we needed then was to enhance the efficacy of these recombinant vaccines. During his inaugural speech, David Baltimore, the Nobel Laureate and former president of the California Institute of Technology, stated, "When you grow up with a world like that, there is a central aspect of society that makes no sense: politics.
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From page 92... ...
African scientists trained at the ILMB went back to Senegal, produced the diagnostic kits, and trained other African scientists from 30 different laboratories to successfully transfer the technology.5 The accomplishment of postdoctoral researchers and students in the lab is evident in publications such as Science, Nature, and other top scientific journals, including Nature Biotechnology. This is proof that these people are capable of making valuable contributions in a supportive environment.
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From page 93... ...
You would probably grumble. You would probably go to your faculty governance meetings and say, "We have to do something about this." One of the interesting things is that as these National Research and Education Networks evolve, and as this international connectivity comes into place, and networks are built and the prices start to fall, you start to free up money that can then be used on other things, like computers and software and content-related activities.
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From page 94... ...
The other message was that places like the University of California, Davis, and Columbia University have resources and training and capacity to help development constructively without leaving Africa alone. An example is my center, where we do a lot of capacity-building training on how to manage data and use data for decision making in Millennium Villages and in the African context.
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From page 95... ...
Professor Carlson, you articulated very nicely some suggestions for changing professional institutional structures to get scientists to share data, but in my field in global health and public health, the incentives are not enough. You cannot just have carrots.
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From page 96... ...
96 THE CASE FOR INTERNATIONAL SHARING OF SCIENTIFIC DATA DR. RILEY: How do you deal with greed and corruption?
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