Open access, open data, open standards (?): sharing data generated through developer
The last decade in British archaeology has seen an increasing overlap between developer funded and academic archaeology with the development of the so called ‘ big data’ projects, which have used huge amounts of developer funded data to develop groundbreaking new syntheses, particularly for the Roman period. It now seems to be almost universally accepted that ‘big data’ has been a good thing and that the future of developer funded data must be open access. However, behind the scenes there is still a good deal of disagreement over how this open access future is to be achieved; for example, whether through bespoke databases hosted on websites such as the ADS, or through the uploading of grey literature reports without supporting data to the websites of individual organisations. Should data standards be enforced? And if so how? Through the peer review of supporting data sets? Or should we all just learn to live with ‘characterful data’ – relying on future, yet to be realized machine learning algorithms to make our data sets talk to each other? This paper will explore some of these issues using a ‘big data’ case study developed as part of the English Landscapes and Identities Project and comparing this to the speaker’s experience of generating data within a large developer funded commercial practice.
DANIEL STANSBIE, COTSWOLD ARCHAEOLOGY