Why Publish Data

• Knowledge Sharing
• Reproducibility
• Archival
• Ram B. Singh case

Survey of Journal Authors

• 10 inquiries
• 5 responses
• Answer:
• “Available upon request...”
• “... with qualifications”

American Economic Review Data Policy

Authors of accepted papers that contain empirical work, simulations, or experimental work must provide to the Review, prior to publication, the data, programs, and other details of the computations sufficient to permit replication. These will be posted on the AER Web site.

http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data_availability_policy.html

Benefits of Published Data

Source: Global Warming Art

• Quality control
• Mann’s climate data
• Better analysis
• Lott’s “More Guns, Less Crime”
• Better visualizations
• Fisher's barley data

How to Publish Data

5.0,3.5,1.6,0.6,setosa
5.1,3.8,1.9,0.4,setosa
4.8,3.0,1.4,0.3,setosa
5.1,3.8,1.6,0.2,setosa
4.6,3.2,1.4,0.2,setosa
5.3,3.7,1.5,0.2,setosa
5.0,3.3,1.4,0.2,setosa
7.0,3.2,4.7,1.4,versicolor
6.4,3.2,4.5,1.5,versicolor
6.9,3.1,4.9,1.5,versicolor
5.5,2.3,4.0,1.3,versicolor
6.5,2.8,4.6,1.5,versicolor
5.7,2.8,4.5,1.3,versicolor
6.3,3.3,4.7,1.6,versicolor
...
  

• Raw Data Files
• Plain Text Files
• XML -- What schema?
• SQL Database
• Data Sharing Sites
• Web Document Sites

Example: Fisher Iris Data

• HTML Table
• CSV
• Proprietary
• Swivel
• Google Docs

Links

• Discussion page for this session
• Data Sharing (Wikipedia)
• CODATA Data Science Journal: Special Issue: Open Data for Global Science
• Public access to research in HHS bill (U.S.)
• NIH Data Sharing Policy (U.S.)
• OECD Principles for Access to Research Data [PDF]
• WSJ Article on questionable Ram B. Singh paper
• Shooting Down the “More Guns, Less Crime” Hypothesis [PDF]