David De Roure

Web Observatories

For the Benefit of Humanity

Technical• Multiple observatories• Datasets and dataflows• Analytics• Tools and software• Automation• Notification (real time)• Provenance• Secure• Linkable• Programmatic access• Visualisation (eyepiece?)

Social• Researchers• Managers• Shared artefacts

(intermediate results, annotation)

• Shared methods• Collaborative analysis• Policy• Responsible innovation• Training• Standards!

An observatory is sociotechnical

Query Installanalytic Subscribe

Anatomy of an observatory

ongoing collection

• Articulating the business and technical requirements for the Web Observatory

• Need all observatory stakeholders, and links to other W3C activities

• Starting by identifying existing observatories, current practice and use cases

• Preliminary discussions: need to describe observatories, datasets, data flows, policies, and to share results and methods

• Announced at WWW, WEBIST and WebSci 2012• http://www.w3.org/community/webobservatory/

Web Observatory Community Group

• Scoped as (virtual) Web Science Observatory• Web as an artefact (data about Web vs on)• What are the questions that a Web Scientist wants to ask

of the observatory? In 2020?• Reproducible/Reconstructable/Responsible Research• Feedback loop – astronomy is special case (locations of

stars not socially constituted…)• Start with tractable project (e.g. twitterology, timeline)• Incentives to deposit?• Closed vs open, disclosure risk• Observatory management, policy and legal agreements

part of value-add

WSTNet workshop at Web Science 2012

• Events: Microsoft Faculty Summit workshop, Digital Research 2012 (10th September, Oxford)

• Encouraging you to sign up • Setting up regular meeting time• Introductions, check for stakeholder coverage• Interlinking with other W3C activities• “Observing the observatories” – exemplars, scope• Emerging use cases…

Next Steps for W3C Community Group

NRAO/AUI/NSF

telescopes for the naked mindDatascopes

From Signal to Understanding

1. Web as lens

2. Web as artefact

3. Web as

infrastructure

david.deroure@oerc.ox.ac.ukwww.oerc.ox.ac.uk/people/dder

blogs.nature.com/eresearch

@dder

http://webscience.org/http://www.w3.org/community/webobservatory/ http://www.digitalsocialresearch.net/