Panel discussion on Peer Review of Scientific Data
"Data centers have few established practices for peer review of data. Indeed there is no clear definition of what peer review of data really means. Is it a review of data accuracy or validity, or is it a review of data documentation to ensure complete description of uncertainty and context? Despite these challenges, scientists and data managers have a professional and ethical responsibility to do their best to meet the data publication goals asserted by AGU." [Parsons, M. A., R. Duerr, and J.-B. Minster (2010),Data Citation and Peer Review, Eos Trans. AGU,91(34), 297, doi:10.1029/2010EO340001.]
Wednesday, September 21, 2011, 4:00 - 6:00, Millenium Hotel's Boulder Creek Living Room.
Note that the Millenium is graciously providing us this room including wireless connectivity without charge. Please attend this meeting and consider purchasing a drink or appetizer to support the Millenium and our continued use of this room and its amenities.
Mark Parsons, Program Manager, Senior Associate Scientist, NSIDC
Matt Mayernik, Research Data Services Specialist, NCAR library
Eric Kihn, Deputy Director of the National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA
Karen Simmons, Experiment Manager for Galileo UVS/EUV instruments and archivist for data from Voyager and Galileo. Also, current archive specialist on an archiving grant through NASA for very old (1969, 71,75 etc) planetary data., provider to NASA PDS, LASP
Rob Wilson, Scientist studying magnetospheres of the outer planets, using PDS data, LASP
Topics for discussion include:
- Should data peer review differ from conventional document review? If so, how and why? What does peer review of a dataset really mean?
- How are peer-reviewed datasets certified? Everyone knows the peer reviewed journals and has some notion of their impact. How does that work for data?
- Who conducts the review? Who is the "editor" to coordinate the review?
- Does peer review imply more responsibility or accountability for the data "publisher"?
- One critical discussion should be about what facility is accepting the data and how they operate, what requirements they have for peer review and discussion of how well that's worked in the past. Their perspective is often quite different from that of a scientist.
Please join us in this discussion!
The discussion will be followed by a short business meeting for feedback and planning purposes.