Re: flagship use cases proposal

On Feb 18, 2010, at 8:26 PM, Yolanda Gil wrote:

> Hi Paul:
>
> Your proposal is very reasonable, thanks as always for pushing the  
> requirements document forward and doing this synthesis.
>
> I wonder what others think, but one thing I'd suggest to keep in  
> mind is who our main immediate consumers are going to be.  Right now  
> my sense is that it is going to be the Linked Data community, and if  
> I am right it is a pity that there is no use case centered around  
> that topic.  If you want to keep the number to 3, I would say that  
> if I had to take one of your proposed 3 out it would be #2 (public  
> policy), as that area is kind of behind in the times for social  
> reasons.  Just my 2c though, what do others think?

Hi Yolanda,

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "behind the times".  It is  
true that the use case is written more from the perspective of the  
traditional pen-and-paper approach to research but the social  
scientists involved in this kind of work are very interested in moving  
parts of it online and available in ways that provide greater value to  
funders and society.  This kind of data would, I think, be a big part  
of the eGovernment visions discussed last week.

I view linked data (or curated databases, which seem like the same  
thing to me) as very relevant to the evidence/public policy use case  
since online, shared and linked data is likely the future of data  
management for these areas (as they are already central in  
bioinformatics).

Likewise, social science research tends to involve a mix of  
qualitative, manual steps and quantitative, computational steps.  So,  
to address Luc's concern, the scenario I described could also  
highlight provenance in scientific workflows, as well as the issue of  
integrating linked/curated data provenance and workflow provenance.

So it would make more sense to me to broaden the evidence use case to  
clarify its relevance to linked data and scientific workflow settings,  
rather than simply replace it.

Of course, since I wrote the use case, naturally I'm partial to it :)

--James

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Received on Friday, 19 February 2010 12:05:14 UTC