scholarly journals Evaluating FAIR Maturity Through a Scalable, Automated, Community-Governed Framework

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D Wilkinson ◽  
Michel Dumontier ◽  
Susanna-Assunta Sansone ◽  
Luiz Olavo Bonino da Silva Santos ◽  
Mario Prieto ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Web Application ◽  
Detailed Report ◽  
Digital Resources ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Digital Resource ◽  
Funding Agencies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Relevant Community ◽  
Compliance Tests

AbstractTransparent evaluations of FAIRness are increasingly required by a wide range of stakeholders, from scientists to publishers, funding agencies and policy makers. We propose a scalable, automatable framework to evaluate digital resources that encompasses measurable indicators, open source tools, and participation guidelines, which come together to accommodate domain relevant community-defined FAIR assessments. The components of the framework are: (1) Maturity Indicators - community-authored specifications that delimit a specific automatically-measurable FAIR behavior; (2) Compliance Tests - small Web apps that test digital resources against individual Maturity Indicators; and (3) the Evaluator, a Web application that registers, assembles, and applies community-relevant sets of Compliance Tests against a digital resource, and provides a detailed report about what a machine “sees” when it visits that resource. We discuss the technical and social considerations of FAIR assessments, and how this translates to our community-driven infrastructure. We then illustrate how the output of the Evaluator tool can serve as a roadmap to assist data stewards to incrementally and realistically improve the FAIRness of their resources.

scholarly journals Evaluating FAIR maturity through a scalable, automated, community-governed framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Wilkinson ◽  
Michel Dumontier ◽  
Susanna-Assunta Sansone ◽  
Luiz Olavo Bonino da Silva Santos ◽  
Mario Prieto ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Web Application ◽  
Detailed Report ◽  
Digital Resources ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Digital Resource ◽  
Funding Agencies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Relevant Community ◽  
Compliance Tests

Abstract Transparent evaluations of FAIRness are increasingly required by a wide range of stakeholders, from scientists to publishers, funding agencies and policy makers. We propose a scalable, automatable framework to evaluate digital resources that encompasses measurable indicators, open source tools, and participation guidelines, which come together to accommodate domain relevant community-defined FAIR assessments. The components of the framework are: (1) Maturity Indicators – community-authored specifications that delimit a specific automatically-measurable FAIR behavior; (2) Compliance Tests – small Web apps that test digital resources against individual Maturity Indicators; and (3) the Evaluator, a Web application that registers, assembles, and applies community-relevant sets of Compliance Tests against a digital resource, and provides a detailed report about what a machine “sees” when it visits that resource. We discuss the technical and social considerations of FAIR assessments, and how this translates to our community-driven infrastructure. We then illustrate how the output of the Evaluator tool can serve as a roadmap to assist data stewards to incrementally and realistically improve the FAIRness of their resources.

An open-source R-package and web application for high-quality probabilistic predictions in hydrology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Hunter ◽  
Mark Thyer ◽  
Dmitri Kavetski ◽  
David McInerney
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Web Application ◽  
R Package ◽  
Error Model ◽  
Objective Functions ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Probabilistic Error

<p>Probabilistic predictions provide crucial information regarding the uncertainty of hydrological predictions, which are a key input for risk-based decision-making. However, they are often excluded from hydrological modelling applications because suitable probabilistic error models can be both challenging to construct and interpret, and the quality of results are often reliant on the objective function used to calibrate the hydrological model.</p><p>We present an open-source R-package and an online web application that achieves the following two aims. Firstly, these resources are easy-to-use and accessible, so that users need not have specialised knowledge in probabilistic modelling to apply them. Secondly, the probabilistic error model that we describe provides high-quality probabilistic predictions for a wide range of commonly-used hydrological objective functions, which it is only able to do by including a new innovation that resolves a long-standing issue relating to model assumptions that previously prevented this broad application.  </p><p>We demonstrate our methods by comparing our new probabilistic error model with an existing reference error model in an empirical case study that uses 54 perennial Australian catchments, the hydrological model GR4J, 8 common objective functions and 4 performance metrics (reliability, precision, volumetric bias and errors in the flow duration curve). The existing reference error model introduces additional flow dependencies into the residual error structure when it is used with most of the study objective functions, which in turn leads to poor-quality probabilistic predictions. In contrast, the new probabilistic error model achieves high-quality probabilistic predictions for all objective functions used in this case study.</p><p>The new probabilistic error model and the open-source software and web application aims to facilitate the adoption of probabilistic predictions in the hydrological modelling community, and to improve the quality of predictions and decisions that are made using those predictions. In particular, our methods can be used to achieve high-quality probabilistic predictions from hydrological models that are calibrated with a wide range of common objective functions.</p>

scholarly journals Monitoring Cropping Systems: From Data Collection to Cloud Database Storage Using Open Source Software

Proceedings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Ioanna Panagea ◽  
Dangol Anuja ◽  
Marc Olijslagers ◽  
Jan Diels ◽  
Guido Wyseure
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Web Application ◽  
Cropping Systems ◽  
Cropping System ◽  
Query Languages ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Raw Data ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Study Sites

Agricultural cropping systems and experiments include complex interactions of processes and various management practices and/or treatments under a wide range of environmental and climatic conditions. The use of standardized formats to monitor and document these systems and experiments can help researchers and stakeholders to efficiently exchange data, promote interdisciplinary collaborations, and simplify modelling and analysis procedures. In the scope of the SoilCare Horizon 2020 project monitoring and assessment work package, an integrated scheme to collect, validate, store, and access cropping system information and experimental data from 16 study sites, was created. The aim of the scheme is to make the data readily available in a way that the information is useful, easy to access and download, and safe, relying only on open source software. The database design considers data and metadata required to properly and easily monitor, process, and analyse cropping systems and/or agricultural experiments. The scheme allows for the storage of data and metadata regarding the experimental set-up, associated people and institutions, information about field management operations and experimental procedures which are clearly separated for making analysis procedures faster, links between system components, and information about the environmental and climatic conditions. Raw data are entered by the users into a structured spreadsheet. The quality is checked before storing the data into the database. Providing raw data allows processing and analysing as each other user needs. A desktop import application has been created to upload the information from spreadsheet to database, which includes automated error checks of relationship tables, data types, data constraints, etc. The final component of the scheme is the database web application interface, which enables users to access and query the database across the study sites without the knowledge of query languages and to download the required data. For this system design, PostgreSQL is used for storing the data, pgAdmin 4 for database management administration, MongoDB for user management and authentication, Python for the development of the import application, Angular and Node.js/Express for the web application and spreadsheets compatible with LibreOffice Calc. The system is currently tested with data provided by the SoilCare study sites. Preliminary testing indicated that extended quality control of the spreadsheets was required from the system’s administrator to meet the standards and restrictions of the import application. Initial comments from the users indicate that the database scheme, even if it initially seems complicated, includes all the variables and details required for a complete monitoring and modelling of an agricultural cropping system.

scholarly journals Evaluating FAIR-Compliance Through an Objective, Automated, Community-Governed Framework

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D Wilkinson ◽  
Michel Dumontier ◽  
Susanna-Assunta Sansone ◽  
Luiz Olavo Bonino da Silva Santos ◽  
Mario Prieto ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Community Involvement ◽  
Software Infrastructure ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Data Infrastructure ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Automated Evaluation ◽  
Funding Agencies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Fair Principles

AbstractWith the increased adoption of the FAIR Principles, a wide range of stakeholders, from scientists to publishers, funding agencies and policy makers, are seeking ways to transparently evaluate resource FAIRness. We describe the FAIR Evaluator, a software infrastructure to register and execute tests of compliance with the recently published FAIR Metrics. The Evaluator enables digital resources to be assessed objectively and transparently. We illustrate its application to three widely used generalist repositories - Dataverse, Dryad, and Zenodo - and report their feedback. Evaluations allow communities to select relevant Metric subsets to deliver FAIRness measurements in diverse and specialized applications. Evaluations are executed in a semi-automated manner through Web Forms filled-in by a user, or through a JSON-based API. A comparison of manual vs automated evaluation reveals that automated evaluations are generally stricter, resulting in lower, though more accurate, FAIRness scores. Finally, we highlight the need for enhanced infrastructure such as standards registries, like FAIRsharing, as well as additional community involvement in domain-specific data infrastructure creation.

Anti-corruption in History

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Wellbeing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Legitimate Power ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Over Time

Anticorruption in History is the first major collection of case studies on how past societies and polities, in and beyond Europe, defined legitimate power in terms of fighting corruption and designed specific mechanisms to pursue that agenda. It is a timely book: corruption is widely seen today as a major problem, undermining trust in government, financial institutions, economic efficiency, the principle of equality before the law and human wellbeing in general. Corruption, in short, is a major hurdle on the “path to Denmark”—a feted blueprint for stable and successful statebuilding. The resonance of this view explains why efforts to promote anticorruption policies have proliferated in recent years. But while the subjects of corruption and anticorruption have captured the attention of politicians, scholars, NGOs and the global media, scant attention has been paid to the link between corruption and the change of anticorruption policies over time and place. Such a historical approach could help explain major moments of change in the past as well as reasons for the success and failure of specific anticorruption policies and their relation to a country’s image (of itself or as construed from outside) as being more or less corrupt. It is precisely this scholarly lacuna that the present volume intends to begin to fill. A wide range of historical contexts are addressed, ranging from the ancient to the modern period, with specific insights for policy makers offered throughout.

scholarly journals Experimental Economics in Agriculture: A Review of Worldwide Research

Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 1566
Author(s):  
Ernesto Mesa-Vázquez ◽  
Juan F. Velasco-Muñoz ◽  
José A. Aznar-Sánchez ◽  
Belén López-Felices
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Experimental Economics ◽  
Scientific Production ◽  
Bibliometric Study ◽  
Agricultural Activity ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Wide Range

Over the last two decades, experimental economics has been gaining relevance in the research of a wide range of issues related to agriculture. In turn, the agricultural activity provides an excellent field of study within which to validate the use of instruments employed by experimental economics. The aim of this study is to analyze the dynamics of the research on the application of experimental economics in agriculture on a global level. Thus, a literature review has been carried out for the period between the years 2000 and 2020 based on a bibliometric study. The main results show that there has been a growing use of experimental economics methods in the research on agriculture, particularly over the last five years. This evolution is evident in the different indicators analyzed and is reflected in the greater scientific production and number of actors involved. The most relevant topics within the research on experimental economics in agriculture focus on the farmer, the markets, the consumer, environmental policy, and public goods. These results can be useful for policy makers and researchers interested in this line of research.

scholarly journals Carbon pricing under uncertainty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick van der Ploeg
Keyword(s):  
Term Structure ◽  
Discount Rate ◽  
Carbon Price ◽  
Abatement Cost ◽  
Risk Tolerance ◽  
Policy Uncertainty ◽  
Carbon Pricing ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Macroeconomic Uncertainty ◽  
Wide Range

AbstractEconomists have adopted the Pigouvian approach to climate policy, which sets the carbon price to the social cost of carbon. We adjust this carbon price for macroeconomic uncertainty and disasters by deriving the risk-adjusted discount rate. We highlight ethics- versus market-based calibrations and discuss the effects of a falling term structure of the discount rate. Given the wide range of estimates used for marginal damages and the discount rate, it is unsurprising that negotiators and policy makers have rejected the Pigouvian approach and adopted a more pragmatic approach based on a temperature cap. The corresponding cap on cumulative emissions is lower if risk tolerance and temperature sensitivity are more uncertain. The carbon price then grows much faster than under the Pigouvian approach and discuss how this rate of growth is adjusted by economic and abatement cost risks. We then analyse how policy uncertainty and technological breakthrough can lead to the risk of stranded assets. Finally, we discuss various obstacles to successful carbon pricing.

scholarly journals COVID-TRACK: world and USA SARS-COV-2 testing and COVID-19 tracking

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ye Emma Zohner ◽  
Jeffrey S. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Web Application ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Time Lags ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Major Health ◽  
Dynamic Representation ◽  
Graphical Displays ◽  
The Usa ◽  
User Friendly

Abstract Background The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major health and socio-economic disruptions worldwide. Accurate investigation of emerging data is crucial to inform policy makers as they construct viral mitigation strategies. Complications such as variable testing rates and time lags in counting cases, hospitalizations and deaths make it challenging to accurately track and identify true infectious surges from available data, and requires a multi-modal approach that simultaneously considers testing, incidence, hospitalizations, and deaths. Although many websites and applications report a subset of these data, none of them provide graphical displays capable of comparing different states or countries on all these measures as well as various useful quantities derived from them. Here we introduce a freely available dynamic representation tool, COVID-TRACK, that allows the user to simultaneously assess time trends in these measures and compare various states or countries, equipping them with a tool to investigate the potential effects of the different mitigation strategies and timelines used by various jurisdictions. Findings COVID-TRACK is a Python based web-application that provides a platform for tracking testing, incidence, hospitalizations, and deaths related to COVID-19 along with various derived quantities. Our application makes the comparison across states in the USA and countries in the world easy to explore, with useful transformation options including per capita, log scale, and/or moving averages. We illustrate its use by assessing various viral trends in the USA and Europe. Conclusion The COVID-TRACK web-application is a user-friendly analytical tool to compare data and trends related to the COVID-19 pandemic across areas in the United States and worldwide. Our tracking tool provides a unique platform where trends can be monitored across geographical areas in the coming months to watch how the pandemic waxes and wanes over time at different locations around the USA and the globe.

scholarly journals RiboA: a web application to identify ribosome A-site locations in ribosome profiling data

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Danying Shao ◽  
Nabeel Ahmed ◽  
Nishant Soni ◽  
Edward P. O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Integer Programming ◽  
Web Application ◽  
Stop Codon ◽  
Ribosome Profiling ◽  
Programming Method ◽  
Analysis Tool ◽  
Site Location ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
A Site

Abstract Background Translation is a fundamental process in gene expression. Ribosome profiling is a method that enables the study of transcriptome-wide translation. A fundamental, technical challenge in analyzing Ribo-Seq data is identifying the A-site location on ribosome-protected mRNA fragments. Identification of the A-site is essential as it is at this location on the ribosome where a codon is translated into an amino acid. Incorrect assignment of a read to the A-site can lead to lower signal-to-noise ratio and loss of correlations necessary to understand the molecular factors influencing translation. Therefore, an easy-to-use and accurate analysis tool is needed to accurately identify the A-site locations. Results We present RiboA, a web application that identifies the most accurate A-site location on a ribosome-protected mRNA fragment and generates the A-site read density profiles. It uses an Integer Programming method that reflects the biological fact that the A-site of actively translating ribosomes is generally located between the second codon and stop codon of a transcript, and utilizes a wide range of mRNA fragment sizes in and around the coding sequence (CDS). The web application is containerized with Docker, and it can be easily ported across platforms. Conclusions The Integer Programming method that RiboA utilizes is the most accurate in identifying the A-site on Ribo-Seq mRNA fragments compared to other methods. RiboA makes it easier for the community to use this method via a user-friendly and portable web application. In addition, RiboA supports reproducible analyses by tracking all the input datasets and parameters, and it provides enhanced visualization to facilitate scientific exploration. RiboA is available as a web service at https://a-site.vmhost.psu.edu/. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/obrien-lab/aip_web_docker under the MIT license.

Sanctions with Chinese Characteristics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Poh
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Chinese Characteristics ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Complete Alignment ◽  
Depth Interviews

The view that China has become increasingly assertive under President Xi Jinping is now a common trope in academic and media discourse. However, until the end of Xi Jinping’s first term in March 2018, China had been relatively restrained in its use of coercive economic measures. This is puzzling given the conventional belief among scholars and practitioners that sanctions are a middle ground between diplomatic and military/paramilitary action. Using a wide range of methods and data — including in-depth interviews with 76 current and former politicians, policy-makers, diplomats, and commercial actors across 12 countries and 16 cities — Sanctions with Chinese Characteristics: Rhetoric and Restraint in China’s Diplomacy examines the ways in which China had employed economic sanctions to further its political objectives, and the factors explaining China’s behaviour. This book provides a systematic investigation into the ways in which Chinese decisionmakers approached sanctions both at the United Nations Security Council and unilaterally, and shows how China’s longstanding sanctions rhetoric has had a constraining effect on its behaviour, resulting in its inability to employ sanctions in complete alignment with its immediate interests.

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