Search

We present a high-resolution, densely sampled data set of wild bird songs collected over multiple years from a single population of great tits, Parus major , in the U.K. The data set includes over 1 100 000 individual acoustic units from 109 963 richly annotated songs, sung by more than 400 individual birds, and provides unprecedented detail on the vocal behaviour of wild birds. Here, we describe the data collection and processing procedures and provide a summary of the data. We also discuss potential research questions that can be addressed using this data set, including behavioural repeatability and stability, links between vocal performance and reproductive success, the timing of song production, syntactic organization of song production and song learning in the wild. We have made the data set and associated software tools publicly available with the aim that other researchers can benefit from this resource and use it to further our understanding of bird vocal behaviour in the wild. • We present a large data set of songs from a wild population of great tits. • It contains 1.1 M acoustic units from 109 K songs recorded over several years. • It includes extensive metadata and annotations. • The data set and associated software tools are publicly available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the prevalence of research software as independent records of output within UK academic institutional repositories (IRs). There has been a steep decline in numbers of research software submissions to the UK's Research Excellence Framework from 2008 to 2021, but there has been no investigation into whether and how the official academic IRs have affected the low return rates. In what we believe to be the first such census of its kind, we queried the 182 online repositories of 157 UK universities. Our findings show that the prevalence of software within UK Academic IRs is incredibly low. Fewer than 28% contain software as recognised academic output. Of greater concern, we found that over 63% of repositories do not currently record software as a type of research output and that several Universities appeared to have removed software as a defined type from default settings of their repository. We also explored potential correlations, such as being a member of the Russell group, but found no correlation between these metadata and prevalence of records of software. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings with regards to the lack of recognition of software as a discrete research output in institutions, despite the opposite being mandated by funders, and we make recommendations for changes in policies and operating procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated a novel cognitive-ecological account for misbeliefs about the relationship between food healthiness and tastiness. We propose that different frequencies of healthy and tasty foods in contrasting contexts can trigger perceptions that health and taste are related in ways that diverge from the actual health–taste correlation in the presented food. To investigate this proposal, we conducted three studies (total N = 369), including a taste test, with adult Prolific academic participants from the United Kingdom and undergraduate psychology students from Austria. Our results showed that different frequencies of healthy and tasty food across contrasting contexts can trigger misbeliefs about the relationship between health and taste. These findings demonstrate that properties of the food ecology combined with basic cognitive processes can help explain the formation of beliefs about food such as that unhealthy food tastes better than healthy food. Our study extends the existing explanations for food beliefs and provides a perspective on how they can be changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers are increasingly being asked by funders, publishers and their institutions to share research data alongside written publications, and to include data availability statements to support their readers in finding this data. In the UK, UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) is one of the largest funding bodies and has had data-sharing policies for several years. This article investigates the reasons why a researcher may or may not share their data and assesses whether funders, publishers and institutions are supporting data-sharing behaviour through their policies and actions. A survey with 166 responses gave an indicative assessment of researcher opinions around data sharing, and a corpus of 3,277 journal articles retrieved from four UK institutions was analysed using multivariate logistic regression models to provide empirical evidence as to researcher behaviour around data sharing. The regression models provide insight into how this is affected by the funder, institution and publisher of the research. This study identifies that those publishers and funders who give clear guidance in their policies as to which data should be shared, and where this data should be shared, are most likely to encourage good practice in researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blue spaces (or water bodies) have a positive impact on the built-up environment and human health. Various open and high-resolution land-use/land-cover (LULC) datasets may be used for mapping blue space, but they have rarely been quantitatively evaluated and compared. Moreover, few studies have investigated whether existing 10-m-resolution LULC datasets can identify water bodies with widths as narrow as 10 m. To fill these gaps, this study evaluates and compares four LULC datasets (ESRI, ESA, FROM-GLC10, OSM) for blue space mapping in Great Britain. First, a buffer approach is proposed for the extraction of water bodies of different widths from a reference dataset. This approach is applied to each LULC dataset, and the results are compared in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and the F1-score. We find that a high median accuracy (i.e., >98%) is achieved with all four LULC datasets. The OSM dataset gives the best recall and F1-score. Both the ESRI and ESA datasets produce better results than the FORM-GLC10 dataset. Additionally, the OSM dataset enables the identification of water bodies with widths of 10 m, whereas only water bodies with widths of 20 m or more can be identified in the other datasets. These findings may be beneficial for urban planners and designers in selecting an appropriate LULC dataset for blue space mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity has adverse consequences for those affected. We tested whether the association between obesity and its adverse consequences is reduced in regions in which obesity is prevalent and whether lower weight bias in high-obese regions can account for this reduction. Studies 1 and 2 used data from the United States ( N = 2,846,132 adults across 2,546 counties) and United Kingdom ( N = 180,615 adults across 380 districts) that assessed obesity's adverse consequences in diverse domains: close relationships, economic outcomes, and health. Both studies revealed that the association between obesity and its adverse consequences is reduced (or absent) in high-obese regions. Study 3 used another large-scale data set ( N = 409,837 across 2,928 U.S. counties) and revealed that lower weight bias in high-obese regions seems to account for (i.e., mediate) the reduction in obesity's adverse consequences. Overall, our findings suggest that obesity's adverse consequences are partly social and, thus, not inevitable.

Other types of assets included surveys containing health information, clinical trial data, genomic data, support services and patient data generated by technologies. DATA IN REGISTRIES Many charities fund and support patient data registries and innovative data collections. The majority of these assets were patient data registries ( I n i = 21) and biobanks ( I n i = 13), holding information about patients, and tissues and biological samples respectively. The importance of transparency and openness in research data to drive patient benefit - Examples from the United Kingdom. [Extracted from the article]

Active travel has received increased investment and interest in many countries both due to COVID-19 and to policies which promote a shift in mobility behaviours to support a wide range of public and individual goods. However, while there has often been substantial investment in the physical infrastructure that can help facilitate active travel, there has not so far always been commensurate investment in the data infrastructure which can help enable people to shift trips to active modes. Current fragmented data and data models and a lack of data standards pose a barrier to the development of the applications which are needed to support planners, users and journey planning. There is therefore a need for a more integrated, better-connected and more richly attributed active travel geospatial network model. This paper describes the development of such a data model, and its initial application to a case study of Great Britain. It demonstrates how the development, population and maintenance of such a data model could facilitate a range of novel applications, such as the personalisation of active travel journey planning to address different user needs and capabilities. If the potential societal benefits from investment in physical active travel infrastructure are to be fully realised, this needs to be supported by the availability of a robust spatial data infrastructure capable of providing the information required by walkers, wheeled users and cyclists to make effective use of the active travel network. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study has been carried out to identify the open data initiatives taken by different governments. The study also incorporated the benefits and challenges and myths of open data applications. It is a qualitative study based on the review of already published literature. Literature was searched from scholarly databases by using multiple keywords. Articles were selected based on relevance to the topic. The UK, US, Maldova, Pakistan, and Fingal Country Catalog cases have been elaborated. The challenges include technical, legal, organizational, managerial, financial, methodological, and conceptual issues. The myths of open data include; 1) All information should be unrestrictedly publicized, 2) It is a matter of merely publishing public data, 3) Every constituent can make use of open data, 4) Open data will result in open government. It will help report already taken initiatives and encountered challenges to better tackle initiatives taken by novice organizations. The organizations planning to adopt linked and open data technologies can overview issues and challenges and benefit from the best practices. This study is one of its kind as assembling open data technologies based on evidence from the literature is not presented before the current study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increase in demand for research data management (RDM) policies to improve the quality of research data however, there is no clear-cut policy content to guide the process. The purpose of this study is to identify the existing RDM policies. Specifically, the study compares and differentiates the RDM policies in three developed nations (USA, UK and Australia) to ascertain how the policies vary. The RDM policies of 100 universities from the three countries, that are present online were retrieved and content analysis approach using NVivo and SPSS were performed. The results from the analysis revealed that the common underlying facts of the policies were found in the areas of access, retention, sharing, storage and ownership. All the universities share the same core values in the management of their research. They exhibit that Data Management Plan (DMP) is essential. The study concluded that the differences in the data management are mostly issues of focus areas. More so, there is no fixed retention period for research data. To resolve the few differences identified, common criteria for data management is proposed for policy considerations to ensure compliance. Finding from the study is significant to developing countries as it adds to the discourse on data management policies. The study will also enable policy makers in developing countries to draw empirical evidence from the developed world on RDM and this will form a basis for policy direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explain the rise of geospatial data, its importance for business and some of the problems associated with its development and use. Design/methodology/approach: The paper reviews a certain amount of previously published literature but is based mainly on analysis of the very large number of responses to a consultation paper on geospatial data published by the UK Government. Findings: The findings are that while there is strong appreciation of the potential benefits of using geospatial data, there are many barriers to the development, sharing and use of geospatial data, ranging from problems of incompatibility in data definitions and systems to regulatory issues. The implication for governments and for providers and users of geospatial data relates to the need to take a long-term approach to planning in resolving the issues identified. Research limitations/implications: The research findings are limited to the UK, but similar findings would be likely in any other large Western country. Practical implications: This paper confirms the need for a strong and coherent approach to the planning of geospatial data and systems for the establishment of a clear basis for the different parties to work together and the need to clearly separate the roles of the government in establishing frameworks and standards and the role of the private sector in developing applications and solutions. Social implications: Society is increasingly dependent on the use of geospatial data, in improving living standards and dealing with social problems. The recommendations identified in this paper, if followed, will facilitate these improvements. Originality/value: The value of this paper is the tight synthesis that it provides of a wide ranging and complex range of responses to the UK Government consultation and placing these responses in the wider context of the development of geospatial data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen science plays an increasingly important role in biodiversity research and conservation, enabling large volumes of data to be gathered across extensive spatial scales in a cost-effective manner. Open access increases the utility of such data, informing land-use decisions that may affect species persistence, enhancing transparency and encouraging proliferation of research applications. However, open access provision of recent, fine-scale spatial information on the locations of species may also prompt legitimate concerns among contributors regarding possible unintended negative conservation impacts, violations of privacy and commercial exploitation of volunteer-gathered data. Here we canvas the attitudes towards open access of contributors (104 regional co-ordinators and 510 recorders) of species occurrence records to two of the largest citizen science biodiversity recording schemes, the UK's Butterflies for the New Millennium project and National Moth Recording Scheme. We find that while the majority of participants expressed support for open access in principle, most were more cautious in practice, preferring to limit the spatial resolution of records, particularly of threatened species, and restrict commercial reuse of data. In addition, citizen scientists' opinions differed between UK countries, taxonomic groups and the level of involvement volunteers had in the schemes. In order to maintain successful and democratic citizen science schemes, organisers, funders and data users must understand and respect participants' expectations and aspirations regarding open data while seeking to optimise data use for scientific and societal benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, open science, particularly open data, in psychology has focused on quantitative research. This article aims to explore ethical and practical issues encountered by UK-based psychologists utilising open qualitative datasets. Semi-structured telephone interviews with eight qualitative psychologists were explored using a framework analysis. From the findings, we offer a context-consent meta-framework as a resource to help in the design of studies sharing their data and/or studies using open data. We recommend secondary studies conduct archaeologies of context and consent to examine if the data available are suitable for their research questions. This research is the first we know of in the study of "doing" (or not doing) open science, which could be repeated to develop a longitudinal picture or complemented with additional approaches, such as observational studies of how context and consent are negotiated in preregistered studies and open data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the feasibility studies submitted by six UK cities (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol and Milton Keynes). The datasets were collected during the period of February–March 2017 by exploring their Open Data resources, common visions of their smart programmes and the themes of their projects. The aim of this work is to raise awareness and access of the existing data resources, encourage alignment of data collection and curation among projects with compatible objectives in different cities and to identify the gaps in coverage that are hampering achievement of the cities' visions. In this research, we distinguish between stored datasets that are accessible via data hubs, and live data that are only accessible via application programming interfaces in real time. Given that our findings are purely based on stored Open Data, we conclude that the Smart City dream will be only achieved in reality, where those involved in Smart Cities-related projects co-operate and share both experiences and resources in order to maximize progress towards the common goal but to minimize duplication of efforts and repetition of the same mistakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open government is spreading throughout the world as a policy agenda oriented to foster transparency, participation and collaboration. Despite its increasing relevance in policy documents, there has been a scarce interest in deepening the analysis of how such agenda has been implemented in different national contexts. By adopting a multidimensional and multilevel perspective, we propose a qualitative comparative analysis of institutional digital platforms able to gather the evolution of open government in three European countries. We retrieved 979 open government platforms in France, Italy, and United Kingdom and analyzed them with an original set of indicators grouped in the three macro-areas of e-government, open data and transparency, participation and collaboration. Our study has methodological and policy implications: from the one hand, we provide the widest and deepest survey of open government platforms so far, contributing to the standardization of research methods on this field. From the other hand, we can observe that open government implementation is characterized by some typical traits, suggesting a trans-national convergence; this evidence is particularly prominent in the e-government and open data areas, whereas Participatory platforms are characterised by higher degrees of fragmentation both at the trans-national and at the intra-national levels. The analysis of open government platforms also reveals that, at the intra-national level, public administrations' approaches to digital government are not homogeneous, although at different degrees among the three countries involved in our study, suggesting the need of a better integration and coordination by central authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, the U.K. government announced that the national meteorological agency would be releasing a significant volume of data as part of its Open Data policy agenda. This article explores the interrelationship between this announcement and efforts to boost the competitiveness of the United Kingdom’s weather derivatives industry. Primary qualitative data are analyzed to produce a genealogical account of these policy developments, and Braman’s concept of “informational power” is used to frame a critical narrative of the broader dynamics of power at play. We argue that although there have been significant tensions around efforts to open the United Kingdom’s weather data, these have largely been absorbed by and, ultimately, contained within the hegemonic structures of the United Kingdom’s neoliberal state. We conclude by arguing that this struggle needs to be broadened and externalized beyond the state so that critical questions about the deepening data-driven financialization of climate change can be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest in data amongst small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This article looks at ways in which SMEs can combine their internal company data with open data, such as official statistics, and thereby enhance their business opportunities. Case studies are given as illustrations of the statistical and data-mining methods involved in such integrated data analytics. The article considers the barriers that prevent more SMEs from benefitting in this field and appraises some of the initiatives that are aimed at helping to overcome them. The discussion emphasizes the importance of bringing people together from the business, IT, and statistical worlds and suggests ways for statisticians to make a greater impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors conceptualize Open Data ecosystems by analysing the major stakeholders in the UK. The conceptualization is based on a review of popular Open Data definitions and business ecosystem theories, which are applied to qualitative empirical data. The work is informed by a combination of discourse analysis and a content analysis of in-depth interviews, undertaken during the summer of 2013. Drawing on the UK as a best practice example, the authors examine a set of structural business ecosystem properties: circular flow of resources, sustainability, demand that encourages supply, and dependence developing between suppliers, intermediaries, and users. The authors identify that gaps and shortcomings remain. Most prominently, demand is not yet fully encouraging supply and actors have yet to experience fully mutual interdependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the issues, the role of research data management (RDM) as a mechanism for implementing open research data and the role and opportunities for records managers. The open data agenda is premised on making as much data as possible open and available. However, in the context of open research data there are methodological, ethical and practical issues with this premise. Design/methodology/approach – Two collaborative research projects focusing on qualitative health data were conducted. “DATUM for Health” designed and delivered a tailored RDM skills training programme for postgraduate research students in health studies. “DATUM in Action” was an action research project between researchers from information sciences, health, mathematics and computing, looking at planning and implementing RDM. Findings – Three key issues emerged about what research data is appropriate to make open/accessible for sharing and reuse: re-using qualitative data conflicts with some of the epistemological and methodological principles of qualitative research; there are ethical concerns about making data obtained from human participants open, which are not completely addressed by consent and anonymisation; many research projects are small scale and the costs of preparing and curating data for open access can outweigh its value. In exploring these issues, the authors advocate the need for effective appraisal skills and researcher-focused RDM with records managers playing a useful role. Research limitations/implications – The findings come from two small-scale qualitative projects in health studies. Further exploration of these issues is required. Practical implications – Records managers have new crucial opportunities in the open data and RDM contexts, bringing their expertise and experience in managing a wider range of data and information. They can help realise the benefits of multiple perspectives (researcher, data manager, records manager and archivist) on open research data. Social implications – Researcher-focused RDM offers a mechanism for implementing open research data. Originality/value – It raises complex issues around open research data not found in the records management literature, highlights the need for researcher-focussed RDM and research data appraisal skills and a not yet fully recognised role for records managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematical and computational techniques are developed for the processing and analysis of annual Ministry of Transport roadworthiness (MOT) test data that the UK Department for Transport has placed in the public domain. First, techniques are given that clean erroneous records and a linking procedure is provided that permits the inference of an individual vehicle's mileage between consecutive tests. Methods are then developed that analyse aggregate mileage totals, as a function of vehicle age, class and geography. The inference of aggregate mileage rates as a function of time is then considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many decisions rest on people's ability to make estimates of unknown quantities. In these judgments, the aggregate estimate of a crowd of individuals is often more accurate than most individual estimates. Remarkably, similar principles apply when multiple estimates from the same person are aggregated, and a key challenge is to identify strategies that improve the accuracy of people's aggregate estimates. Here, we present the following strategy: Combine people's first estimate with their second estimate, made from the perspective of someone they often disagree with. In five preregistered experiments ( N = 6,425 adults; N = 53,086 estimates) with populations from the United States and United Kingdom, we found that such a strategy produced accurate estimates (compared with situations in which people made a second guess or when second estimates were made from the perspective of someone they often agree with). These results suggest that disagreement, often highlighted for its negative impact, is a powerful tool in producing accurate judgments.