data sharing

[Doug Yanega]

Hugh Wilson wrote (among other things):

>However, systematic data - regardless of
>source - are constantly changing.  Thus, any effort to 'grab' data
>from an unknowing but active source will only produce an outdated
>resource in that updates will always be generated the folks that are
>really doing the work.

Richard Zander followed up on this aspect, as well. Note that this is a
different matter than I was concerned with originally, as here you're now
talking about *academic* use of the online data rather than commercial,
which is a different form of possible exploitation, depending on how you
view things. If the scientific community was more willing to give credit
for people who create databases (i.e., that it is the kind of thing that
would be considered during tenure reviews, etc.), then the idea of being
"exploited" by having one's database used by others for their own
publications would be a non-issue, the same way no one blinks when one of
their papers is cited by someone else. The matter of intellectual property
rights is an old one, we're just working up new wrinkles.
        For example, the aspect of this that is most complex, in the
context of collections databases, is who really deserves the credit for
work based on the data in the database? If, for example, there is an
institution which has a prominent worker's entire collection of a certain
taxon, and someone else puts this all in an online database, and someone
else then uses this database to produce a publication on, say, descriptive
biogeography and phenology (little more than a graphic presentation of the
data), then the bulk of the work was done by the collector, followed by the
person who worked up the database, followed by the actual author of the
paper - all of whom may be folks with a vested interest (career-wise) in
having their efforts recognized. Is it really fair that only the person who
*publishes* gets credit for the end product? A database is, in many ways, a
novel type of resource, and it isn't clear to me that objective standards
have been worked out as to how they, and works based upon them, should be
treated - though I have confidence that people *will* eventually work this
out to everyone's satisfaction.

Peace,

Doug Yanega    Depto. de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciencias Biologicas,
Univ. Fed. de Minas Gerais, Cx.P. 486, 30.161-970 Belo Horizonte, MG   BRAZIL
phone: 31-499-2579, fax: 31-499-2567  (from U.S., prefix 011-55)
                  http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82