Media Advisory 11-009

National Science Board Task Force on Data Policies to Hold Expert Panel Discussion on March 28-29 at NSF Headquarters

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The National Science Board will hold an expert panel discussion on data policies. (Credit and Larger Version)

March 21, 2011

The National Science Board's (NSB) Committee on Strategy and Budget (CSB), Task Force on Data Policies will host a two-day expert panel discussion on March 28 and 29, at the National Science Foundation (NSF) headquarters in Arlington, Va.

Experts from across the United States and from the United Kingdom and Germany will participate in this workshop discussion.  The full meeting agenda is online.

Members of the media and the public are invited to the meeting. Highlights include:

MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2011

8:20a.m. - 10 a.m.  Session I: The Vision of Data-Intensive Science

Guiding questions: What are some of the defining characteristics of data-intensive science? What are the goals for enabling re-use and re-purposing of data? What new opportunities and new types of science have yet to be realized? These questions build upon the vision for a new NSF-wide program in computational and data-intensive science.

10:15 a.m. - 12 p.m.  Session II: Reproducibility, First Steps and Guiding Principles

Guiding questions: Reproducibility starts to scope the problem and drives all sorts of related issues (curation, cost, etc.). What does this mean for types of discovery that need data sharing? What are the implications for data publishing and data citation? Would complete data release include the original, "raw" data; cleaned-up, publication-ready data, along with the methods for clean-up; publication-ready data with the meta-data necessary to reproduce any interpretations of the data; raw data with software to make it usable to others; data organized in a way that is interoperable to some standard; etc.?

12:30 p.m.  Lunch Presentation: High Performance Cyberinfrastructure is Needed to Enable Data-Intensive Science and Engineering

Dr. Larry Smarr, Harry E. Gruber Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University Of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering; and Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology

1 p.m. - 3 p.m.  Session III: Exemplars, Lessons Learned

Guiding questions: What types of incentives can be created? How has data publication impacted innovation?

3:15 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.  Session IV: Impacts

Guiding questions: What are the measurable impacts? What is the early experience with the NSF-wide requirement for Data Management Plans? What are the impacts on research universities? What are the international complexities, particularly for large facilities with international partnerships? What are the legal complexities? What is the potential for overlap of policy when comparing the curatorship of physical specimens and the management of large, and often digital, datasets?

TUESDAY, MARCH 29, 2011

8:30 a.m.  National Science Foundation Perspective

Remarks from officials from the National Science Foundation

8:45 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.  Session V: Policy Issues

Guiding questions: How do we frame the issues for institutions, government agencies, publishers and any other stakeholders? What are the relative merits of various types of repositories for data? How should the various repositories be funded? To what extent should NSF assist in development and adoption of standards for such efforts? To what extent should deposit in repositories be required of awardees?

10:45 a.m. - 11 a.m.  Public Comment Period

Dr. José-Marie Griffiths will take a few comments and questions from the audience present at the workshop

11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.  Session IV: Policy Issues (continued)

The NSB is the 25-member policymaking body for NSF and advisory body to the president and Congress on science and engineering issues. Drawn from industry and universities, and representing a variety of science and engineering disciplines and geographic areas, NSB members are selected for their eminence in research, education or public service, and records of distinguished service. NSB members are appointed for six-year terms. The NSF director is an ex officio member of the NSB. The newest members of the NSB were sworn in during the December 2008 meeting. More background on the NSB and its current composition is available online.

Note: Reporters are invited to attend all open sessions, subject to provisions of the Government in the Sunshine Act. All sessions will be held at the NSF headquarters: 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia. Journalists interested in attending and covering the meeting and/or interviewing NSF or NSB officials should contact Dana Topousis at 703-292-7750 by 5 p.m. on Thursday, March 24, 2010, to make arrangements.

-NSF-


Media Contacts

Dana Topousis, NSF, (703) 292-7750, dtopousi@nsf.gov

Program Contacts

Blane Dahl, NSF, (703) 292-7000, bdahl@nsf.gov

The U.S. National Science Foundation propels the nation forward by advancing fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. NSF supports research and people by providing facilities, instruments and funding to support their ingenuity and sustain the U.S. as a global leader in research and innovation. With a fiscal year 2023 budget of $9.5 billion, NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 40,000 competitive proposals and makes about 11,000 new awards. Those awards include support for cooperative research with industry, Arctic and Antarctic research and operations, and U.S. participation in international scientific efforts.

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