

Academia.edu Lets Researchers Share Their Raw Data - RichardPrice
http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/academia-edu-raw-data/

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simonster
Why should people put their data here rather than Dryad
(<http://www.datadryad.org/>), which assigns DOIs and doesn't require
registration to download data sets, and is a non-profit organization, governed
by a board including PLoS and Science and powered by completely open source
software?

~~~
RichardPrice
If your papers are already on Academia.edu, and that is where you share your
research output, it's useful to be able to share your data-sets and code too.

Of course that doesn't prevent you from uploading data to other places on the
web, such as the site you mention...

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tnhh
Simply providing the ability to upload data only solves a small part of the
problem. We run the CRAWDAD wireless network data archive
(<http://crawdad.org/>) and the hardest parts are: convincing people to share
data; ensuring that the data can be shared (much of the time this is not
possible due to consent, data protection, etc); sanitising the data; and
finally (and most time-consumingly) creating appropriate metadata so that the
data are meaningful to other researchers.

The Research Data Alliance (<http://rd-alliance.org/>) is trying to solve many
of these problems.

~~~
RichardPrice
Agreed. There are many aspects to changing the scientific ecosystem in such a
way that sharing data-sets is the default, not the exception.

My sense is that the most critical aspect here is the incentives aspect. I
think if sharing data-sets can enhance a scientist's reputation, and make it
easier for them to demonstrate to grant committees that they have had an
impact on the field, scientists will put in the work to curate and share data-
sets.

------
teeboy
Graduate student myself: This a cry for business that will fall on deaf ears
in academia. Nobody would ever publish half-baked code that 'does the job',
for the fear of getting judged. And none of us have time to prettify the code.

Academia.edu started with a lot of promise but is frankly a useless
placeholder of your name and Email ID now. ResearchGate has surpassed them
long ahead in useful features and Mendeley is already very good. They are just
making some money from the academic jobs ads and I frankly don't see a future
for them if they are happy being almost the exact same product for the past 3
years I have used them.

~~~
RichardPrice
You're right to focus on rewards. The rewards have to be there for academics
to share their data-sets and code. The feedback loop needs to be closed, so
that if you share your data, and that data has an impact, that impact is
reflected back on you. You can then take that impact and show it to your
tenure/grant committee, who can reward you for it. There are a bunch of
startups, Academia.edu being one of them, that are very focused on closing
that feedback loop.

Mendeley and ResearchGate are both great companies, but if you look at
Quantcast/Compete/Alexa, you'll see that Academia.edu is noticeably larger
than them in traffic. Academia.edu also has more users. I'm sorry to hear that
Academia.edu doesn't satisfy your use-case though....

------
RichardPrice
Another dimension to sharing data-sets along with papers is that papers with
data-sets attached get more citations
[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal....](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000308)

Readers prefer papers with data-sets attached to them, because you can check
the data and see how the conclusions of the paper stand up. That preference
may be part of what drives the higher citation rates.

------
kirk21
Cool! It is necessary to have second opinions as the recent Excel blooper
shows (see
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/24/i...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/24/inside-
the-offbeat-economics-department-that-debunked-reinhart-rogoff/))

I heard that <http://bohr.launchrock.com/> is working on something similar.

------
SilasX
I ... thought the internet already did that.

~~~
RichardPrice
Currently 75% of the world's scientific data isn't shared.
[http://codata2012.tw/news/75-of-research-data-is-never-
made-...](http://codata2012.tw/news/75-of-research-data-is-never-made-openly-
available)

The main reason for that is that there is an established reputation system for
papers, namely journals, but there isn't one for content formats that aren't
papers - data-sets, code, videos, images etc.

Part of what Academia.edu is doing is building a new reputation system in
science based on audience metrics: how many people have read your papers, from
which countries; how many followers you have etc. We are then attaching
various kinds of scientific media to that reputation system in order to
accelerate sharing.

The idea is that if you can build your reputation by sharing your data-sets,
you're likely to consider doing it.

~~~
no-opinion
This could potentially be an interesting thing to incorporate with Wikipedia.

~~~
RichardPrice
Do you mean having a reputation system on Wikipedia, or the ability to put
data-sets on Wikipedia?

~~~
no-opinion
Both I suppose, I think it would be interesting to browse Wikipedia and have
access to actual peer reviewed science (with all the accompanying data). I am
aware the wiki articles are supposed to be sourced, but that can be hit and
miss.

