Keynote lecture by Professor Sabina Leonelli at IDCC 2018

No (Open) Science Without Data Curation: Five Lessons From the Study of Data Journeys

This talk discusses the conditions under which Open Science – and particularly Open Data - can be fostered by examining the history and current characteristics of existing practices of data management and re-use across biological and biomedical research projects. I lead an ERC project dedicated to the study of ‘data journeys’, that is the ways in which data are made to travel well beyond the sites in which they were originally produced. The study revealed several key challenges for Open Science implementation, which I will discuss in detail. I shall conclude that adequate, labour-intensive data curation is crucial to tackling these challenges in ways that are reliable and sustainable in the long term.

Biography

Sabina Leonelli is professor in philosophy and history of science at the University of Exeter, UK, where she co-directs the Exeter Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences and leads the “Data Studies” research strand. She is a member of the European Open Science Platform, representing the Global Young Academy, and a key expert for the EU Mutual Learning Exercise on Open Science. Her research (funded largely by the European Research Council until 2019) focuses on the philosophy of data-intensive science, the history and epistemic and ethical implication of data curation and research data management, and the ways in which the open science movement is redefining what counts as research and knowledge across research environments. Her book Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study appeared in 2016 with Chicago University Press.

Her lecture will take place on the 20th of February.

View International Digital Curation Conference 2018 Programme