A talk given at the "Use Cases for Provenance Workshop" at the eSI on April 20 2009

1. In your worst nightmares
How experimental scientists are
doing provenance for themselves

4. Non-st
ackup
esn’t b andard/
bly do
Proba inconsi
stent
data fo
rmats
Record o
f
data anal
ning?
ysis? ersio
V

5. Non-st
ackup
esn’t b andard/
bly do
Proba inconsi
stent
data fo
rmats
Record o
f
data anal
ning?
ysis? ersio
V
Uses Excel for data analysis?!?!!

6. ...a typical dataset...

7. We have...
tp://www.flickr.com/photos/schnurrbart/43568532/ CC-BY-SA

8. But how did we end up here?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmasters/2884480103/ CC-BY-SA

9. ...we used to be good at this...
© Cell Press, Nature Publishing Group, American Chem
Soc, American Soc Microbiology, fair use claimed

10. When it was on paper...
...you had to ask for a copy...
...and you said so in the paper...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nbachiyski/2186228572/ CC-BY

11. But in the online world...
...too many people
...too many files
...too much movement
...it’s all too hard isn’t it?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/antjeverena/3368703708/ CC-BY

12. But all is not lost...

13. ...because even online researchers
still care about citation

14. http://twitter.com/mrgunn/statuses/1542572037
http://is.gd/tgaz

15. http://is.gd/thvE
http://is.gd/thwD

16. Link to information...
...acknowledge source...
...evolving best practice

17. http://is.gd/thzK
?

18. http://is.gd/thAA

19. Expectations of link behaviour
Granularity of citation
Evolving best practice
Some technical problems....mostly social

20. Some real research data...

21. Published data... http://is.gd/thCK

22. Published data... http://is.gd/thEg

23. Data summary... http://is.gd/thEX

24. Original experiment http://is.gd/thFa

25. Versioning... http://is.gd/thGb

26. Versioning and provenance...
...through linked open data...
...and third party timestamps

27. Video
http://is.gd/thMB

28. URI for every object...
...can link in or out
No semantics to links
(at the moment)

29. http://is.gd/thVr

30. Technical solutions...
• Push data to the open web
• Highly granular URIs...repositories for which “the
file” is not the atomic concept
• Strong versioning and forking functionality...like any
halfway decent code repository
• Strong identity management solutions for people,
projects, organizations
• Tools for linking objects

31. Social solutions...
• Use the strong culture of citation in
community
• Leverage the need of researchers to
track their own data properly
• A discussion of best practice for citation,

32. Problems are primarily
social, not technical...
....technical solutions are
needed to make it easy

33. ...but the first problem
is to tell people why
they should care...