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Re: [ontology-summit] Shareable versus reusable, or shared and reusable

To: Ontology Summit 2014 discussion <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Eric Prud'hommeaux <eric@xxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 10:56:09 -0400
Message-id: <20140419145607.GA20480@xxxxxx>
* Jack Ring <jring7@xxxxxxxxx> [2014-04-19 06:54-0700]
> Perhaps an item shared is one that exists within the boundaries of two or 
>more systems simultaneously whereas an item reused is a copy (perhaps not 
>exact) that exists outside of the boundary of the system in which the 
>predecessor exists.    (01)

That describes reuse in terms of governance, but I think that governance model 
is only one way reuse may manifest. It might be more comprehensive to describe 
reuse in terms of uses of the data outside of its initial purpose.    (02)

Routine clinical care mandates the acqusition of lots of standardized 
observations. Some of this advises physicians through a cycle of diagnosis and 
efficacy evaluation, some of it simply covers their butts in case of legal 
trouble. Ostensibly, the primary purposes of this is for the immediate 
treatment of the patient. Of course, there are a ton of other uses of this 
data: statistical evaluation of treatment efficacy for populations or covariate 
conditions (including genetics), epidemiology, outbreak surveillance, 
evaluations of facilities and policies, etc. All of these can save many lives 
or long-term treatment dollars but cost a lot because of variability and 
unexpressed contexts in the data.    (03)

The US Affordable Care Act, and lots of text by various standards orgs, talks 
about "secondary reuse", which is anything beyond the primary intention of the 
data acquisition. For those purposes, reuse is itself an act, but its viability 
is contigent on standardization reducing the variability of the data and 
defining minimum coverage. When we talk about reuse (or even sharing, for that 
matter), we're using the name of the act as an avatar for the disciplines that 
enable it.    (04)


> On Apr 19, 2014, at 1:21 AM, Matthew West (Information Junction) 
><matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Dear Terry,
> > I agree strongly with the distinction you are making here. Unfortunately, 
>what you have described here as reuse, is what I am used to call sharing. So I 
>think we must conclude that there is considerable variation in the use of 
>these terms. I think it would be useful to note the variation in usage, and 
>perhaps suggest some more precise terminology such as controlled and 
>uncontrolled reuse/sharing.
> > 
> > Regards
> >  
> > Matthew West                           
> > Information  Junction
> > Mobile: +44 750 3385279
> > Skype: dr.matthew.west
> > matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
> > https://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
> > This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England 
>and Wales No. 6632177.
> > Registered office: 8 Ennismore Close, Letchworth Garden City, 
>Hertfordshire, SG6 2SU.
> >  
> >  
> >  
> > From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
>[mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Ofterry.longstreth
> > Sent: 19 April 2014 06:51
> > To: Ontology Summit 2014 discussion
> > Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Shareable versus reusable, or shared and 
>reusable
> >  
> > Andrea,
> > Thank you for bringing this issue back to the forum.  My background, and 
>most of my work history has been in data and information management systems 
>development, starting with my joining IBM in 1967.  I've been a member of 
>ACM-Sigmod since the late 70s, and was responsible for one of the first 
>attempts that I'm aware of to use a commercial data dictionary product to 
>manage the software application interfaces of a large and complex command and 
>control database, designed according to the normalization principles being 
>laid down at the time by Ted Codd, Chris Date, and Ron Fagin (among many 
>others, I list these only because their names spring to mind).  
> > 
> > I am a dynamicist, which seems to give me a different perspective on data 
>and its use from what I see in this year's summit. My perspective is 
>applicable to all stored data  whether representing an ontology, a computer 
>program, or live operational values for an enterprise.  In my view, data, and 
>by extension an ontology, ontology fragment, ontology module, or a composition 
>of ontologies, is not a priori a stable entity.  This incipient volatility 
>(Dr. Ted Codd called it 'time-varying')  to me is the essence of the utility 
>function for use/reuse or sharing.  In fact, if the data (ontology) is truly 
>static, frozen, stabilized or invariant, it's not very interesting to me.  All 
>data represents some abstraction, and the permanence of each abstraction is 
>always open to question.  Of course if the data is being presented in an 
>historical context (last years tax code) it mustn't change but I'm assuming 
>for the purposes of Ontology and ontological commitment the actual semantics 
>must be to some degree either fluid or so ambiguous as to be useless in an 
>expression in logic. 
> > 
> > So here is how I would differentiate between use/reuse and sharing:
> > When it's made available within a community of interest (however defined) 
>for other members of that community to use in some non-prespecified purpose, 
>and the data is changed after the fact of it's being applied to that purpose, 
>the onus is upon the supplier to notify those consumers of possible impacts to 
>them.. That's my view of reuse and reusability; the intent and commitment of 
>the supplier is that the dynamics of evolution are accommodated in reuse 
>protocols that allow some level of cooperation among the participants.  
> > In their use, the Federal and state Tax Codes have many of the properties 
>of an Ontology, and all users (Accountants, lawyers, taxpayers, Turbotax...) 
>must be periodically told of the state of the codes to allow them to properly 
>pay or report value transactions to the Tax authorities.  All of those 
>affected entities are collaboratively engaged in a cycle of data reuse.   Of 
>course, they share the tax codes with the tax makers and collectors, but the 
>sharing is on the whole, incidental
> > So, sharing is not a collaborative exercise.  Public libraries are 
>repositories of shared data.  The NIH has specific rules for sharing of 
>research data (which presumably applies to BIOMED, OBO, and related health and 
>medicine ontologies developed under government funding). These rules are 
>almost exclusively focused on fostering availability of the data, and imply 
>that the most common form of sharing is publication in some freely available 
>medium (or document).  The data is shared when anyone else reads it. 
>Collaboration is not an explicit requirement (though it's acknowledged as a 
>desirable outcome in some cases).  Most importantly, once in final 
>publication, there is very little effort expended to correct it, and 
>essentially no effort to coordinate those corrections with others who may have 
>been impacted by the distinctions raised in using the pre versus post 
>correction data.
> > In summary, Reuse implies collaborative application of shared knowledge 
>among a community with concomitant communication of changes to the 
>information, while sharing of an Ontology is equivalent to publishing it for 
>others to use with no commitment to coordinate changes or corrigendae, and in 
>general, no requirement to know who or how the "downstream" community might 
>employ the Ontology.
> > 
> > 
> > I don't know if the ideas I've expressed here have any bearing on the 
>communique for this year's Summit,  but I do appreciate the opportunity to air 
>my thoughts. 
> > 
> > Terry Longstreth - longstreth@xxxxxxx
> > 
> > 
> > On 4/17/2014 10:08 PM, Andrea Westerinen wrote:
> > I know that Terry Longstreth raised a question on the conference call today 
>about sharing versus reusing.
> > 
> > I tried poking around the web to see how others used the terms, and here is 
>what I found:
> > 
> > 1. Many people talk about sharing and reusing together (but clearly 
>something must first be shared in order to be reused)
> > 
> > 2. When there is some distinction, it seems to come from where and how you 
>share (in what repositories or libraries, and with what licensing terms).  
>Then, depending on the where and how of sharing, you might or might not enable 
>reuse.
> >  
> > Terry, Do you define this differently?
> > 
> > Andrea Westerinen
> > T: 425.891.8407
> > arwesterinen@xxxxxxxxx or andreaw@xxxxxxxxxxx
> > http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?AndreaWesterinen
> > organizingknowledge.blogspot.com
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >  
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-- 
-ericP    (07)

office: +1.617.599.3509
mobile: +33.6.80.80.35.59    (08)

(eric@xxxxxx)
Feel free to forward this message to any list for any purpose other than
email address distribution.    (09)

There are subtle nuances encoded in font variation and clever layout
which can only be seen by printing this message on high-clay paper.    (010)

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