Paleontology in the 21st Century

Yesterday I stumbled upon a recently published paper by Wolfgang Kiessling (Natural History Museum Berlin) about the current state of paleontology in Germany.

Kiessling, W. et al., 2010. German Paleontology in the 21st Century. Palaeontologica Electronica, 13(1), 13.1.2E. (online)

In this editorial piece, Kiessling and co-authors reflect on the current state of paleontology in Germany, the reasons why paleontology has become a niche subject, despite the fact that biodiversity studies receive a lot of interest (and money), and despite the fact that paleontology used to be at the core of geology. Kiessling et al. identify a number of factors specific to the situation in Germany, but many factors that can be generalised.

The greatest risk for German paleontology is the continued closure of university departments and the replacement of retired paleontologists by non-paleontologists. This threatens the future of our students in science and the paleontological research community may fall below a critical mass which is needed for innovative research. Some of these problems fall in the responsibility of the paleontologists themselves (e.g., lack of innovative approaches, apparent absence of practical/ economic applicability, tactical mistakes) but others are the result of administrative actions to save or shift resources independent of the quality of research and teaching.

I tend to disagree with Kiessling's identification of cause and effect. (See also in Stratigraphy.net internals "Paleontology - The very late adaptors?" of 15 Feb 2008.) But I do hope, that some will perceive this paper as a wake-up call to move paleontology into the 21st Century.

How much money is in the scientific data management 'business'?

The answer to this question probably nobody knows... But, based on some numbers I know, I will give a rough estimate on how much money potentially could be made with scientific data management - in Europe.

The 7th European Framework Programme (fp7) provides more than 50 billion € for research projects between 2007-2013. The structure of fp7 is quite complicated and it is almost impossible to find out how much of this money exactly is spent for bio- and geosciences.
The themes 'Agriculture and Fisheries, Biotechnology' and 'Environment (including Climate Change)' alone are funded with > 3.8 billion €. So let's estimate the European Commission spends around 4 billion € for bio- and geosciences.

Source	Mio €
fp7 (total)	50000
fp7 (bio/geo themes)	~4000
fp7 (potential for DM)	~45-50

To my knowledge, those European research projects which provide some money for data management, reserve 0.5-3% of the total project funding for this purpose. The mean percentage is about 1.5%. From the 4 billion I mentioned above, some projects may not need data management at all. However, if at least 75-80% of all research projects produce data, 1.5% of the remaining 3 billion € would include around 45-50 million € for data management. This seems to be much money, but the fp7 started in 2007 and will last until 2013, so the yearly amount of money for data management (DM) potentially(!) spent is around 6.5-7 Mio €. The potential market for scientific data management still seems to be considerable.

Of course this money is not really spent. The percentage of projects which include proper data management is certainly below 75%. I would estimate less than 30% of all projects reserve money for data handling. Further, we need to consider that proponents from 27 member countries compete for this money (as little appropriate data centers exists the competition for the remaining millions is not as hard in reality...).

I used the fp7 example, as the European Commission has shown considerable interest in improving open access to scientific data. As far as I know, this issue is also considered in project proposal evaluations. However, the money the European Commission spends is only one possibility for funding, ideally national funding agency will also support access to data. If you are living in a lucky country, national funding for DM could equal the amount the Commission spends.

In summary, I think the scientific data management niche is still interesting, while there is not as many money you might have expected. However, as the importance of e-science infrastructures and open access to scientific information has only recently been recognized, this sector may still grow in the future.

iGeoInfo - An Obituary

When the "International Coalition for Geoinformatics" (iGeoInfo) was launched at the 2004 International Geological Congress in Florence, Italy, it seemed like the next hot thing, bringing together efforts in the US and Europe in "Coordinating GeoInformatics Efforts in Sedimentary
Geology and Paleobiology." (Klump, Jens, Robert Huber, u. a. (2005), Workshop Launches International Coalition for GeoInformatics, EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, 86(3), 27-28.)

At the time, the cyberinfrastructure programme in the US was not even a year old and with CHRONOS and GEON two major projects had been launched. Sedimentary geology and palaeontology, two traditionally fractioned fields, had to make sure they don't fall by the wayside.

Meanwhile, the scene has changed dramatically. CHRONOS has faded away, GEON is only a shadow of its former self, and PaleoDB is scrambling for the necessary funds. New kids have appeared on the block and seem to be far more popular with the community, which also translates into NSF support. Being less bullish with the community than the old champs seems to pay off.

As CHRONOS faded away it also let go of the domain igeoinfo.org and iGeoInfo became virtually homeless. A few attempts were made to revive it, but the absence of a common goal led the remaining participants to the conclusion that this wandering soul could now be put to rest.

iGeoInfo may rest in peace.

New business models for earth science data management

The value of data sharing has long been recognised and proclaimed in several manifestos and policies (e.g. Berlin Declaration, Budapest Open Access Initiative, OECD). Funding organisations most strongly support Open Access or even have initiated programs which aim to strengthen data and information infrastuctures (e.g. NSF). The importance of data archiving was also acknowledged by funding agencies and some of them have published good practice guides or data policys which aimed to convince scientists to publish their primary data in appropriate archives.

However, data management costs money. In the past, funding agencies preferred to fund the development of new systems, but they fail to ensure funding long term operation of the resulting infrastructures. Funding organisations have slowly woken up to the problem of how projects can be transformed into infrastructures but the problem is still not solved.

Even though the value of data sharing is recognised, there is little motivation for researchers to prepare their data for online access. It only causes extra work, does not add much to prestige and recognition among peers. From a researcher’s perspective, the money is better spent on further research. In this framework, policies on data sharing remain without effect.

This does not mean that researchers are unwilling. In fact, the majority is willing to share their data but in many cases are frustrated by the difficulties arising when they try to submit their data to a database. Many scientific database operators have not understood the paradigm shift in how the web works, the shift towards user generated content. I know, that mentioning "user generated content" in this context opens a can of worms. The point is, that most scientific databases, especially the publicly mandated ones, are not service oriented and simply rely on their mandate.

The funding agencies are in a dilemma. Their rules make it difficult to adapt to this rapidly evolving field. So, where is the business model to start-up independent and innovative, service oriented scientific databases? Restricted data access and paid services? This will not work because individual researchers are not able and willing to pay. Another possible avenue to obtain funding is to convince researchers of the benefits of data services and join scientific projects e.g. as subcontractors.

For this model to be successful requires motivation on both sides. User frustration needs to be avoided and technical as well as service infrastructure needs to be most up to date. Improved cooperation between data centres surely is an advantage to close own service gaps. Project specific data management networks which can share responsibilities might be a solution to satisfy user needs.

CHRONOS quo vadis?

Yesterday I found this interesting entry in the CHRONOS mailing list archive:
http://www.chronos.org/pipermail/dev/2008-January/000344.html
It seems as if CHRONOS has reached a very precarious situation, Cinzia has resigned and her letter speaks for itself..

Paleontology – The very late adaptors?

Even though one would think that the systematic nature of paleontology would lend itself well to computer-based approaches, the paleo community has been surprisingly slow to accept these new tools into their mainstream approaches. In the past years, from the perspective of science funding agencies, paleontology and taxonomy were not considered to be "sexy hot issues". Application of paleontology to climate research was fine, but systematic biology was "old school". The fragmentation of the community did not help its cause.

In fact, the closed-shop mentality of some groups has lead to the demise of promising, well funded projects, which were subsequently axed by the funding organisations. These projects had suffocated from their own arrogance.

Is there a lesson to be learnt? Science funders go a lot by what the scientific community wants. And maybe, in the context of web-based stuff, the emphasis should be on service – not on authority.