Meaningful Open Data: how should we ensure collection and publication of the most useful data, through an approach that enables public service providers to understand the value of the data they hold and helps the public at large know what data is collected?

Much valuable survey data has been lost in the past because of "clearout" by holders and computer services, but without adequate archiving policies. This is true especially of small-scale or ad-hoc studies by staff and students of university and college departments, local authorites and voluntary sector organisations. Whilst ESRC now makes data preservation and publication a condition of grant, other bodies collecting data at public expense should not only be required to at least preserve data, but also, provided privacy of individuals is safeguarded, to publish them or make them openly and freely available. Not-for-profit operations such as National Centre for Social Research set a good example as do many commercial survey organisations. Valuable collections are held, maintained and made available by centres such as the UK Data Archive and Economic and Social Data Service: these are repositories of mainly academic and government surveys, but there does not appear to be an equivalent facility for local government surveys, or for smaller scale academic or local studies. I would like to see a general requirement (short of criminal sanctions, but at the level of a legal duty) not to destroy data, but to preserve them and their documentation to standards and in formats conforming to best current practice. I've been making a small contribution in the shape of some surveys from the 1970s and 1980s which I used for teaching and research (and still do for my website). Unfortunately many studies dating before 1986 were irretrievably lost when my then polytechnic computer services had a clearout. In some cases of collaborative research, my copy of the data is probably now the only copy in existence. Even though the surveys were all done to professional standards on public funds, I cannot place them in the public domain as I need permission from their "owners" (local govt units, health authorities, charities, unions) but cannot because either the client organisation no longer exists or the lead researcher has moved on and the current personnel can find no trace of the study. The obvious repository for some or all of these would be the UK Data archive, but my attempts to interest them have so far been in vain. Meanwhile I'm hanging on to them.

John F Hall

johnfhall@orange.fr

www.surveyresearch.weebly.com

Don't! If there is no defendable reason to protectively mark then publish (and be damned?). Giving someone the power to decide, especially without the consequence of sanctions, only complicates things and opens the process to abuse.