archaeology method store

School of ComputingFaculty of Engineering

Show us your working: an archaeology method store

Anthony Beck & David Stott

Background

During AARG 2010 a Method Store was discussed

This went viral with support from a number of international institutions/people:

Open Knowledge Foundation

Council for British Archaeology

English Heritage

Antiquist

3d heritage

This is its story.....

sorry mainly text and a few pickies

Show us your working

Knowledge industries are undergoing fundamental change. • Research/Policy/Management is becoming ever more open and

collaborative.

The boundaries are blurring between the formal and informal• The traditional power/organisational structures are sometimes no longer

relevant

• As demonstrated y the Western Poland case study

Greater access/transparency is demanded of publically funded research and knowledge. • The ClimateGate scandal at UEA in 2009.

• The Big Society

• Open Data (dot) Gov

Show us your working

Funding councils are demanding that publically funded research should make publications available as openly accessible documents • it is likely that they will soon demand similar access to

• data,

• algorithms

• other outputs from the research process.

Social media companies, like twitter, are changing the research landscape.

Show us your working

Consumers of research are participating in a conversation, not listening to a lecture.

More sophisticated forms of engagement can increase impact dramatically. • This will significantly change the way institutions ‘do business’.

Why

Why

Why

Open Methods provide transparent access to the process

The user controls and understands the data processing and transformation

From Black Box to White Box

What are Open Methods?

What is Open Science

What Open Science is NOT

Just providing access to your data when a project has finished

It's as much about engaging with the process as engaging with the science objects

Why Open Science?

Why Open Science?

Why not Open Science

The Method Store: VISION

A repository that facilitates the collaborative development of methodologies and stops the community re-inventing the methodological wheel.

A framework that is not intimidating for users, allowing all sectors of the domain to participate, but allows potentially rich data objects to be submitted (such as Taverna workflows).

A system that allows links to be drawn between methodologies to indicate, for example, synergy, workflow or provenance.

An environment which captures the cloud of discussion/narrative surrounding the development or forking of a method.

The Method Store: VISION

What is proposed is a methodology store: an environment within which methods, algorithms etc. can be • deposited,

• shared,

• tagged,

• linked,

• chained,

• developed.

The Method Store: Licencing

In the long term this method store will only contain objects that are released under a Creative Commons, or other, open licence. This form of initiative has resonance outside the archaeological community.

What about copyright • Re-use licencing is important

• There are bodies and protocols in place

• ~ Science Commons

• ~ Creative Commons

• ~ GPL

• Not solely an open science issue

The Method Store: Content

The Website

The Future

Workflows

Better referencing

Semantic tagging

The Future: Workflows

The Future

There are other similar initiatives

More will come

Some will gain traction

Others will wither and die

All the content should be cross transferable

The Future

Thanks. Any Questions?

http://methods.okfn.org/