Discussion List Archives

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

ITonline; some words offered on risk

Hi Syd,
Your new 'unanimous para' ok; meanwhile i have drafted too;- see attached risk analysis (copied below as e-text) which might help/could be included.
Greetings from a very wet and cold (gloves needed when cycling) Manchester,
John
 

 

 

 

 

�.However this viewpoint is not to imply that there is no risk (Appendix A).

 

 

 

Appendix A

(i)                 There is a risk that the �paperless office� will not become the majority researcher behaviour on the timescale of the IT online product. A measure of the probability is that neither young nor senior researchers� offices show the demise of paper, rather they work in a multi-dimensional information space still including paper. Thus there is a high probability (7/10) of needing print copies being available for purchase of some content at least (eg akin to the Vol A teaching Edition perhaps?). Indeed this is an opportunity for IUCr sales. The impact of not doing this print option is (a) a likely loss of revenue to the IUCr (subject to a detailed business plan analysis of course) and (b) a likely loss of impact of crystallography in its cognate research fields (structural biology, chemistry and physics for instance). Overall impact 7/10. Overall risk (probability x impact = 49%). Mitigation strategy; have an agreed set of content by all stakeholders for a print version to be made available for sale basically �immediately� demand warrants it.

(ii)               There is a risk that the electronic archive ie of the content might be lost. A measure of the probability of this is the regularity of the appearance/disappearance of storage media. Thus there is a probability of say 5/10. The impact of such a loss could be major ie needing many manyears of effort to recapture the content from authors, programmers etc. Thus the impact can be set at say 10/10. Overall risk 50%. The mitigation strategy would be to place a small number of securely stored print and e-content versions in different locations (to avoid impact of fire etc at one location).  

 

Sydney Hall <[email protected]> wrote:
Lots of feedback on the recommendations waiting for
me this morning. I'll try to sew these views into
another draft and circulate this over the weekend.
In the southern hemisphere academia is full on at
the moment and in addition to school chores I need to
get my presentation material ready for the congress.

A quick summary on the points made...

Howard: * Modify 1(b) and 1(c) and para 3 in the intro.

John: * Modify para 3 to avoid paperless science!
[I intentionally made this statement strong to provoke
discussion; and was puzzled when it didn't happen sooner.]
* Add a recomm on a "short print version" of text info.

Mike: * Ditto, with new recomm on need for interactive tables.
[Your comment on the needs of "old farts" is a little too
close to home for me to give an unbiased response!]

Ulrich: * Comments on recomm 1(d) wrt para 3.

On this last point we need to be careful not to dwell to much
on the archival side of publishing as its a very specialised
business, and somewhat outside the brief of the WG. However
I did add 1(d) to the draft as an alert for the concerns that
Ulrich states. As we inevitably move increasingly to electronic
data, we must avoid the sad tales of data lost on superceded
magnetic/electronic media. This is especially the case for
major repositories such as the IUCr, and I was intrigued to
read in the annual report of the AIP (Am. Inst. Physics) is
archiving volumes on microfilm as "still the only medium
guaranteed to be accessible in a century"). If you add to
that the equally sad tales of lost information on paper
(especially photographs!), I'm not sure we should argue
that paper publications ensure long term data retention.
Experience here with several societies is that digitising
all records and placing them on the web is far safer than
having individuals keep paper records (especially photos).
A case can also be made that electronic data proliferation
and internet sharing is a valid archival approach too
(certainly Google will try to convince us that this is so).

Sorry to labour this point, but retention is an important
aspect of what we are advising on ie. we want data to be more
accessible but also preserved.

Cheers
Syd

PS: For quick responses, would para 3 reworded as.....

"It should also be emphasised that the working group is unanimous in
the view that most crystallographic information should be available
online as soon as possible, and that the use of the Internet, as a
means of sharing scientific data, will expand very rapidly over the
next decade. This is likely to have important implications for many
print-on-paper scientific publications."

be sufficient? Suggested rewordings are welcomed.


------
Professor Sydney R. Hall
School Biomedical & Chemical Sciences
University of Western Australia
Crawley, 6009 AUSTRALIA.
Ph: +61 (8) 6488 2725
Fx: +61 (8) 6488 1118
"Data data everywhere but not a thought to think!" - Theodore Roszak




John R Helliwell
Professor of Structural Chemistry, The University of Manchester;
Joint Appointee with CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory;
Editor-in-Chief Acta Crystallographica published by IUCr.

Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page

4104953208-However this viewpoint is not to imply that there is no risk july 28th 2005.doc