This is the fourteen in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 9-10 November in Gaborone, Botswana, following International Data Week. Dr. Tyng-Ruey Chuang is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an ordinary member. He was nominated by the Academy of Sciences located in Taipei.
I read, admire, and agree with the CODATA’s strategic priorities (as detailed in its 2015 report) on Data Principles and Practices, Frontiers of Data Science, and Capacity Building. I have been working for the last 15 years with researchers from multiple disciplines on data management systems, copyrights and public licenses, as well as open data policies. The goal of these collaborations, always, is to make better use of research data. My training and experience in information science and engineering aligns strongly with the CODATA priorities.
In the past few years, I have collaborated with the Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute on a communal data workflow for the Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network [1]. The result was presented at SciDataCon 2016 [2] and the dataset deposited to GBIF for wide reuse [3]. I have worked with memory institutions on setting up the Sunflower Movement Archive [4]. The result was reported at Digital Humanities 2017 [5]. Both collaborations emphasize building up the necessary frameworks for community involvement, as well as the use of Creative Commons Licenses to facilitate public access to research materials.
I had been the public lead of Creative Commons Taiwan since its beginning in early 2003 until its transition to a community project in June 2018. I was a co-PI of the Open Source Software Foundry (2003 – 2017). These two long-running projects were supported by Academia Sinica in Taipei to outreach to the general public, researchers, and policy makers in Taiwan about the principles and practices of public licenses and free software. Capacity building is an integral part of the two projects.
Currently I am a member of CODATA’s International Data Policy Committee, and a co-chair of CODATA’s task group on Citizen Science and Crowdsourced Data. It has been a honor working with CODATA colleagues in these endeavors. The experience rather confirms my view that capacity building in data principles and practices is an urgent issue for many research institutions.
I am a part of CODATA Taiwan, and once served as its executive secretary (2007 — 2013). I have participated in CODATA General Assembly since 2008, and have organized sessions in the 2010 and 2012 CODATA International Conference, and in the 2014, 2016, and 2018 SciDataCon Conference. The 2012 CODATA International Conference was held in Taipei; I led a local team working with the CODATA Secretariat to organize the conference to a great success.
I am an associate research fellow at the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei, with a joint appointment at both the Research Center for Information Technology Innovation and the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. I was a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, supported in part by a Fulbright senior research grant (2011 — 2012). I am currently a member of the Creative Commons’ Policy Advisory Council (2016 — ). I served, for several times, as a board member of the Taiwan Association of Human Rights, and as a board member of the Software Liberty Association of Taiwan.
[1] <https://roadkill.tw/en>
[2] <https://roadkill.tw/sites/roadkill/files/content/communal_data_workflow_in_tairon.pdf>
[3] <https://www.gbif.org/dataset/db09684b-0fd1-431e-b5fa-4c1532fbdb14>
[4] <http://public.318.io/>