Open Scholarship

I entered into this Faculty Learning Community with a goal to collect and share geospatially linked data transformed using open GIS software. I found “The Open Data Handbook” to be both liberating and overwhelming. The why and the what have been defined and clarified further here – specifically, that open data must be convenient and modifiable, that it must have ‘interoperability’ –an easy interchange and coalescence of data sets. That it should be discoverable, accessible, and useful. The how is what stops me short. The putting it all out there. As Sui emphasizes in his review of open GIS initiatives, accessible data does not guarantee usable data. Usability, in part, requires expertise. For me, the challenge will be navigating the possibilities and platforms, identifying the appropriate open tools to produce and share my work, and encouraging students to take the plunge with me. Through the rabbit hole, this time thanks to Sui, I found my way to the National Research Council’s “Understanding the Changing Planet: Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences.” Bookmarking this here as GIS has the potential to connect innumerable environmental health variables and population demographics with geophysical data. Crowdsourcing plays a role here, and brings up concerns regarding methodology, consistency, and reliability.