wiki-archive/twiki/data/TIP/Review_TipDocuments_CurrentProcess_Summary.txt

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---++ Walter Berendsohn
(Recommendation C1: automation of forms) I have always told people that it is best to do a system manually before it is automated. I am not sure that automation should be introduced at this stage. Do we want to commit resources like this?

---++ Response: Lee Belbin
With the systems these days, such a level of automation is a simple process that should require minimal resources. The resources that are put in now will also save a lot of work of TDWG members down the track. We will only take an automated approach if it is simple to do, effective, and is easy to maintain and build on. I wanted to encourage innovative solutions at this point with a proviso that it has to be effective.

---++ Walter Berendsohn
(recommendation D1: A TAG) "Technical" is a term too restricted to fit in content-oriented standards (Scientific and Technical should be the term, I think, which makes it a STAG).

---++ Response: Lee Belbin
Seems a fair idea to me.

---++ Bob Morris, 9 December 2005
Reading this document provoked a thought which perhaps cuts across the entire concerns of the GBMF project, and only implicitly this document. It is this: why is there so little participation by academic scientists in TDWG, indeed why is there so little \cognizance/ of TDWG by academic scientists?

So:

I. Is it true that academic scientists are under-represented in TDWG?

I can only offer anecdotal evidence:

1. At the 2005 annual meeting, about 25 of 100 attendees had academic affiliation. The proportion at 2004 meeting was somewhat higher. In both cases, a non trivial fraction of those (about six each year were students funded by a special NSF grant for the purpose of getting students to TDWG).
2. In the last three years I've sat on six NSF review panels in which biodiversity informatics did or should have played a consequential role. This represents perhaps 60 proposals I've reviewed very carefully and another 100 that I read slightly and/or about which was present at the review. Only a handful exhibited any knowledge even of the existence of TDWG. Those whose reference to TDWG efforts fell in two distinct classes: proposals by people who already had a close and continuing TDWG connection, and those who had heard of DiGIR and waved their hands at it.
3. I never saw anybody who admitted to being a graduate student attend the TDWG annual meetings until the NSF-funded participants at Christchurch made the scene. If the meeting were important for the advancement of biodiversity informatics, I think one would predict academic laboratories would be trying to have a student presence.
4. I believe that exactly one scholar  (Bryan Heidorn) who intersects the Digital Library or the Information Retrieval communities regularly participates in TDWG, yet both communities are far more heavily involved with automated processing of legacy scientific literature than is TDWG, whose stakeholders have a huge need for tools from those communities.

---++ Response: Lee Belbin
Bob has raised a fundamental issue - TDWG demographics. I raised the idea of a the name change for TDWG because I didn't feel that the composition and the activities of the group were well-reflectd by the TDWG name. I also wanted to stir up some reflection of what TDWG should be. Walter identified the same issue when he read my reports. To advance TDWG, we need to identify what TWG currently is and what we would like it to be. I've developed a survey for members to get a better handle on demographics and desires.

Bob's perceptive feedback is appreciated. 'Academics' should be a highly valued component of any commuity like TDWG. Bob's observations are a case in point. TDWG needs to navigate a path between the cutting edge where active research is fundamental to the bleeding edge where valuable volunteer resources may be wasted.

---++ Bob Morris
II. Are there TDWG policies and procedures which discourage participation of academic scientists?

There is an elephant in the room. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_in_the_living_room if this American(?) English idiom is unfamiliar). The issue arises from a well-meaning desire shared by many organizations dealing with biodiversity issues. This is the desire to facilitate participation from developing areas with scarce financial resources (but tremendously important biodiversity). The common approach, shared by TDWG, is to make meetings take place, frequently, closer to those participants to minimize their travel expense. This bizarrely raises the total cost of attendance at the meeting in general, probably to no measured long-term impact. The important unintended consequence of this is that only the most well-funded academic researchers from the developed countries can attend the meeting.

A second discouraging factor is the promiscuity of the presentation program. Scientists attend professional meetings first of all to exchange information that is not otherwise easily available. But more than a few talks at TDWG are about experiences with standard tools. These may enlighten people who are trying to select tools, but that would be better served in workshops for that purpose. If the talks were refereed to more rigorous standards of novelty and impact, scientists, including both domain and informatics scientists, might have more reason to attend.

---++ Response: Lee Belbin
Fair comment. I stick with my observation that the presentations at the annual meetings need to be better engineered (a higher standard?). If you want the annual meeting to present more cutting edge stuff, I'd say terrific, but I'd encourage two requirements. The presentation should be labelled that it is technical and the first few minutes of all presentations should always provide a context for those who are keen to learn but arn't up with the gory details.

---++ Bob Morris
III. Does the future hold any changes for which the past is not a good model of participation?

Yes. In the past, much of TDWGs constituency has been museum taxonomists and this remains its core constituency if attendance and membership is any indicator. Yet it is already clear that data interchange needs have migrated, and will continue to migrate, to applications running on individual, not institutional, machines, and that deployment of web services is now so cheap and easy as to be also within the realm of individually managed machines. Rod Pages Taxonomic Name Server at http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/MyToL/www/index.php is a case in point. What, for example, keeps Page from being an active TDWG participant?

---++ Response: Lee Belbin
Another good point! I'd picked up that the 'core' of TDWG were the taxonomists and that was changing. The early need for pratical solutions in the applications area was the impetus for TDWG's existance. Two things have changed. The application area has grown like topsy and the technicalities of the solutions has become a number of specialist fields in their own right. Scary. TDWG skates between all these areas of endevour. That strengthens my already strong conviction that TDWG must strongly encourage through policies that would support multidisciplarity. TDWG needs to actively pursue a range of areas of expertise and knowledge
through membership and projects. I'll follow up your point about Rod Page!

---++ Bob Morris
IV. Does it matter if academic scientists are under-represented?

Obviously, \I/ think so because I get a lot out of my participation. It's difficult to know whether the organization thinks so. It's also difficult to know whether a successful decision by the organization to foster it would reduce TDWG's utility to its other constituents.

---++ Response: Lee Belbin
No argument there. TDWG's existance as a respected group is dependent on creating and maintaining an effective multidisciplinary environment.

---++ From: Neil Thomson, 22 December 2005
...Otherwise an excellent document and I hope that the recommendations will be accepted and actuated...

Agree with everything except:
 - General observation 6. I think that we are consensus-based. Or at least have that intention.

---++ Response: Lee Belbin
My only observation was from the St Petersburg meeting, so this is a perception rather than a reality. Feedback suggests there is the intention. It will do no harm to ensure that TDWG policy states it, and that there are good resources for chairs and convenors to tap for how to encourage consensus.

---++Neil Thompson
Alternatives and suggestions:
 - GenObs: Recommendation 4: maybe investigate the Science Commons (or Conservation Commons variant) arrangements for IPR and copyright

---++ Response: Lee Belbin
Will do. Roger Hyam and I have both done some research on this and it would appear that most of the standards organizations similarto TDWG are using identical (really identical) words for both IP and copyright. And - I don't think 0.001% of their members would understand the words!

---++ Neil Thompson
 - GenObs: Recommendation 5: make use of C.Copp's BioCASE thesaurus for the glossary?
 
---++ Response: Lee Belbin
Excellent idea. I'll follow this up.

---++ From: Nozomi Ytow, 23 December 2005
Although I'm still reading the longest documents, I think the documents are well written with careful analysis.  Of course there are points to comment but minor.

Current TDWG Processes: Overall key issue is that whether we have sufficient resources to do
what recommended.  It is worth to emphasize.

---++ Response: Lee Belbin
I think TDWG has the usual 80/20 problems; a few people do most of the work. What I have tried to recommend is that a broader base is developed so that the work can be devolved. I also think that there should be clear workplans of all activities so that everyone would know exactly what was required (individually not much). I see the recommendations largely as largely cost-neutral. If TDWG can setup a more efficient infrastructure, the recommendations should improve the experience of members.





-- Main.LeeBelbin - 09 Jan 2006