Oxfordshire Open Data Sandpit

As part of our programme for this year's Festival of AI, on June 6th we will have a morning (9:30AM-12:30PM) devoted to building new collaborations around open data in Oxfordshire. This will be an opportunity to form collaborations for rapid problem-solving, grants, and other team-ups.  Invitees include representatives of the Open Data Institute, the Oxfordshire County Council, the Local Policy Lab, and the UK Reproducibility Network. We will aim to pursue surface a combination of quick wins, and longer-term projects.  You can register here.

Examples of projects that could be pursued without new external funding include publishing a new data set that researchers could analyse, or inviting students to join a Data Challenge around an existing data set.

We'll also include some time for quick tutorials and demos.  Talks will include:

David Tarrant (Open Data Institute): Foundations to frontiers: The strategic role of open data in a rapidly changing world

Over the past decade, the Open Data Institute (ODI) has been at the forefront of promoting data openness and fostering innovation. As we navigate an era of rapid technological advancements and global changes, the strategic role of open data in both research and practical applications has never been more critical. This presentation will explore the journey from the foundational principles of open data to the frontier of its application in artificial intelligence, sustainable development, and community resilience. Join us to reflect on the ODI’s impactful legacy, uncover lessons learned, and discover practical tools and guides to apply open data in transformative research and innovative solutions within our dynamic world.

Marco Campera (Oxford Brookes) "Open data for sustainable business solutions"

Saad Arif (Oxford Brookes) "Using R etc. in Teaching and Research"

Nina Lewin (Oxford Brookes) "The surprising joy of unexpected data: hunting for data"

Sarah Callaghan (Oxford University and the UK Reproducibility Network) "Moving from closed data to open data, data journals, & data citation"

Jamie Kavanagh (Oxford County Council) "Leveraging GIS and data for public service design"

Simon Cobb (Wikimedia UK) "The basics of Wikidata"

We are awaiting confirmation from some other external speakers.  In the meantime, please contact the organiser, Joe Corneli (jcorneli@brookes.ac.uk) if you would like to present something! 

For example, we might do a quick tutorial on Wikidata, the image below shows hospitals and rail stations inside the county (source code here).  

Alongside quick wins that don't require additional funding, we'll do ideation around grant funding.

Examples of external funding opportunities that we might team up to pursue include:

• OSCARS 1st Open Call for Open Science Projects and Services (this particular opportunity closes in May but will come back again)

• ESRC Responsive Mode: Secondary Data Analysis (an open call with no closing date)

• Various foundations that have funded work on Open Data, such as The World Bank, Ford Foundation, Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Knight Foundation, Hewlett Foundation

• Similarly, foundations that have supported work on Doughnut Economics, including Thirty Percy, ALV Stiftung, KR Foundation, Laudes Foundation, Oak Foundation, Partners for the New Economy, National Lottery Fund

Location

We'll meet in person in the Clerici Learning Studio (CLC 1.12). 

Recommended Reading/Viewing

Montague-Hellen and Montague-Hellen, Publishers, funders and institutions: who is supporting UKRI-funded researchers to share data?, Insights the UKSG journal, 2023.

Poulter, The global knowledge base: open data about everything, TEDx_BathUniversity, 2018.

Sansone, S.-A., Cruse, P., & Thorley, M. (2018). High-quality science requires high-quality open data infrastructure. In Scientific Data (Vol. 5, Issue 1).