National Institute of Informatics News ISSN 1883-1974 (Print) ISSN 1884-0787 (Online) NII Interview Toward an Era of Open Science 57 The Forefront of Open Data Mar. 2016 From Institutional Repositories to Open Science Making Use of Real-World Data in Informatics Research Feature Open Science The Potential of Open Data This English language edition NII Today corresponds to No. 71 of the Japanese edition NII Interview Toward an Era of Open Science What is NII’s role in data sharing? Masaru Kitsuregawa (Director General, National Institute of Informatics） Interviewer: Junichi Taki (Editorial Writer and Senior Staff Writer, Economic Commentary Department, Nikkei Inc.) Moves have begun to release and share to accelerate research but also to act as a Taki: Open science is a phrase we hear a lot the experimental data on which scientific catalyst for producing new knowledge these days. literature is based. For the past several by bringing together the knowledge pro- Kitsuregawa: There are two issues in open hundred years, information has been duced by diverse researchers in a myriad science: open access journals and open re- shared through academic journals and of disciplines. The National Institute of search data. Until now, readers have paid conference presentations, but this is Informatics provides IT infrastructure money to subscribe to journals containing changing dramatically due to the devel- that supports Japanʼs scientific research, scientific literature. In the case of open ac- opment of information and communica- and I asked Director General Masaru cess journals, which are spreading world- tions technology. This move toward Kitsuregawa about the role NII intends wide, the authors pay money to the pub- “open science” has the potential not only to play in open science. lishing company and the articles can be read by the general public free of charge. Masaru Kitsuregawa On the other hand, open research data are the goal of a movement to release the data on which articles are based along with the articles. If one has the data, it be- comes easy to reproduce the claims made in an article. As a result, many researchers are soon able to make use of an articleʼs conclusions and data, and this can acceler- ate scientific progress and innovation. Open research data can also be expected to have the effect of reducing submission of articles that are not reproducible. If data are available, subsequent people will make use of the data in their research, which will not only speed up research but also avoid redundant investment and thereby pro- mote efficiency. The debate about open access journals appears to be drawing to a close for the time being, and so open research data have become the hot topic. Taki: Making data publicly available is im- portant, but there does not appear to be any incentive for researchers to do so. Kitsuregawa: Digital object identifiers (DOIs) are numbers used to identify arti- cles, and the practice of also assigning identification numbers to data and citing the data used when writing an article has already started. This trend respects the re- searchers who have produced valuable data and creates an incentive to publish data. However, data are more difficult to eval- uate than articles. Standards for data accu- 02 Feature │ Toward an Era of Open Science racy vary depending on the purpose of use, ing in terms of technology. As everyone est in. Also, research tends to “effervesce” and the correctness of data may also vary if will have experienced with their personal in interdisciplinary fields. As an inter-uni- the way in which they are used changes. computer, when an OS version changes, versity research institute, NII frequently Perhaps data cannot be evaluated in the application software often stops working. deals with diverse players, and so we will same way as articles. Given this, in the long term, NII will work take advantage of this attribute to try to I understand the feelings of researchers together with researchers in each field to support interdisciplinary research. who want to retain possession of the data examine ways of storing data and to inves- (Photography by Seiya Kawamoto) that they have worked so hard to create, tigate and build a research platform con- but scientists are obliged to guarantee the taining the programs that handle the data. reproducibility of their articles. The prem- This might be regarded as the world of ise is that you will publish what other scien- what is called Science 2.0. tists publish. The question of how to The general trend is for scientific re- achieve a sense of fairness could be broad- search to be placed on IT platforms. Why ly considered an issue of diplomacy. There does everyone use Amazonʼs cloud ser- A Word from the Interviewer is an organization called the Research Data vice? Because the environment provided Alliance (RDA) established by research in- by Amazon is convenient and extensive, stitutions from countries including Japan, and everything you need is there. When the US, and the EU that is holding discus- starting research, it is faster and more effi- sions about the kind of values that can be cient to use, for example, software that has newly created by data sharing. been developed by your predecessors Taki: How will NII respond to the trend for whenever possible, rather than installing opening up data? computers and writing each and every pro- Kitsuregawa: NII supports places such as gram yourself. Data on sequenced DNA have been shared university libraries in operating “institu- Taki: Is this trend common within the scien- by the Human Genome Project, a collabora- tional repositories” for the collection, stor- tific community? tive project between researchers in countries age, and use of scholarly information of Kitsuregawa: It is already standard in ge- including Japan, the US, and the EU. It also appears that experimental and observational universities and other research institutions. nome research in the life sciences. Se- data from equipment such as giant accelera- NII offers a shared repository service called quenced DNA data are shared, and re- tors and large astronomical telescopes have been shared for some time. There is, without searchers, fully aware of what forms the JAIRO Cloud, which is used by 465 universi- doubt, a major trend toward sharing data. ties and research institutions in Japan. I core of their own competitive strength, However, it is hard to believe that unregu- think that universities would be delighted take whatever they need or think is good lated data sharing will proceed in all fields. The situation is not straightforward in fields if this service were expanded so that data from the published data. Googleʼs decision where there is fierce competition between could also be stored. to open up its deep learning library is simi- researchers, companies, or nations. Some data must be protected. I have often heard The nature of data differs between fields lar, but its intention was to attract leading complaints and concerns about information such as astronomy, high-energy physics, researchers and spread Googleʼs method- being leaked at the peer review stage when genome analysis, and materials science, ology. Having people publish libraries and manuscripts are submitted to European or North American journals. A similar situation and data handling practices also vary. Stor- allow anyone to use them freely is one way in the world of data must be avoided. This ing data presents different difficulties than of doing things, but I think the time will will require Japan to actively contribute in the storing articles, and issues such as what to come when we will agree to place every- creation of rules on the publication of data. do with the metadata that are assigned to thing on the same platform. That is what indicate data content, for example, will NII is aiming toward. Junichi Taki have to be resolved through consultations Taki: Moves to provide IT platforms that Editorial Writer and Senior Staff Writer, Eco- with researchers in each field. It might take support research are also being made by nomic Commentary Department, Nikkei Inc. some time, but we have to move forward major publishers and others in the private Joined Nikkei Inc. after graduating from the School of Political Science and Economics, one step at a time. sector. Waseda University. Held positions in the In- Taki: So NII will support research by provid- Kitsuregawa: The commercial viability of dustry Department (now Business News De- partment) and the Washington Bureau, and such services is close in industry, and this is ing storage services. was Senior Staff Writer in the Economics De- Kitsuregawa: Thatʼs right. But with data an area of intense competition between partment at Osaka Head Office, as well as come the programs used to analyze the researchers. Research funds are plentiful, Head of the Science and Technology News Department, Tokyo Head Office, before be- data. These programs also have to be and commercial services are feasible. Per- coming Editorial Writer in March 2009. Areas stored in order to guarantee the reproduc- sonally, I want to focus on supporting fields of responsibility include science and technol- ogy, environment, and medicine. ibility of analyses, and this is also quite tax- that commercial services show little inter- 2016 NII Today │ No.57 03 Forefront of Open Data LOD and DOIs making the Data Web a reality Hideaki Takeda (Professor, Principles of Informatics Research Division, National Institute of Informatics/ Professor, School of Multidisciplinary Sciences, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies) A system of open data makes it possible reuse, and redistribute, that is, a system of format, which will allow the data to be in- to instantly locate research data and arti- open data, are essential in promoting open terlinked and enable the Web itself to cles that are publicly available through- science.