Labour Market Information (LMI)  is not perhaps the most popular subject to talk about. But with the advent of open and linked data, LMI  is increasingly being open up to wider audiences and has considerable potential for helping people choose and plan future careers and plan education programmes, as well as for use in research, exploring future skills needs and for social and economic planning.

This is a video version of a presentation by Graham Attwell at the Slovenian ZRSZ Analytical Office conference on “Short-term Skills Anticipations and Mismatch in the Labour Market. Graham Attwell examines ongoing work on mid and long term skills anticipation in the UK. He will bases on work being undertaken by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and the European EmployID project looking, in the mid term, at future skills needs and in the longer term at the future of work. He explains the motivation for undertaking these studies and their potential uses. He also explains briefly the data sources and statistical background and barriers to the wok on skills projections, whilst emphasising that they are not the only possible futures and can best serve as a a benchmark for debate and reflection that can be used to inform policy development and other choices and decisions. He goes on to look at how open and linked data is opening up more academic research to wider user groups, and presents the work of the UKCES LMI for All project, which has developed an open API allowing the development of applications for different user groups concerned with future jobs and future skills. Finally he briefly discusses the policy implications of this work and the choices and influence of policymakers in influencing different futures.

My previous posts have focused on the forthcoming Y3 Design Conference of the Learning Layers (LL) project. In the first post I compared the situation of the project before the Y1 Design conference (two years ago) and before the Y3 Design Conference (currently).  In the second post I gave an overview how we have been working with the Learning Toolbox (LTB). This third post focuses (with reference to the LTB) to a general issue for the whole LL project and for all pilot activities. In English there several parallel concepts that refer to this problem context – data protection, data privacy, confidentiality …. I German this is all covered with one word: “Datenschutz”.

When discussing the next steps in the piloting with the Learning Toolbox we noticed that we do not have a coherent policy for Datenschutz. In this respect I wrote the following paragraph in the input on LTB to a wiki page of the LL Design Conference:

” (…) we need to develop a clear policy for data protection/ data security (Datenschutz) that covers the Layers Box (LB), the Learning Toolbox (LTB), the social semantic server (SSS) and linked platforms (Baubildung.net). Firstly, we need urgently a brief Users’ Guide for the pilot phase. This is necessary to assure our pilot partners that they have control of their own data when using the LL tools and related services. Secondly, we need to develop the policy for the continuation phase beyond the funding period of the LL project. This is an essential element of the exploitation plans.”

As a response to this apparent need Graham Attwell started looking for documents that could be helpful for us. We all agreed that we need to pay attention to the legal aspects (with sufficiently detailed documents) but we also need to prepare short user-friendly documents that we can use with our pilot partners. From this perspective we started looking at the  Datenschutz policy documents of FutureLearn (a consortium of British universities that organises MOOCs). FutureLearn has developed the following set of documents:

• Terms – the overarching framework agreement that covers in detail all possible policy issues.
• Openness – A short list of openness principles.
• Privacy – Privacy policy declared by the organisation FutureLearn.
• Cookies – Policy for using different type of cookies.
• Accessibility – Accessibility policy (including the responsibilities of different parties).
• Code of Conduct – A short list of principles as the commitments of users to which they agree when signing up.
• Data protection – A short document declaring the policy for data control, data collection and responsibilities of different parties.

We are most certainly aware of the fact that the policies of a provider of MOOCs are different from the ones that the LL project needs to develop. So, there is no prospect for easy one-to-one translations. BUT what inspires us is the nicely differentiated set of coherent documents – some for ordinary users, some for experts – within a common framework. Also, what inspires us, is the fact that FutureLearn – like the LL project – is committed to Open Source software. So, there is a lot in common to work with.

More blogs to come …

The current discussions surrounding Open Access have left me somehow perplexed, mainly because of the turn the debate has taken and which is, in my opinion, a major setback.

So to start with, I think it is useful to remind ourselves of the original purpose of Open Access and where it all started… because sometimes we lose sight of that initial purpose which, in this case, is so, so important.

The Open Access term was first used by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2001 to campaign for the accessibility of knowledge for a wider community. And in their website they explain the need for Open Access (OA) by stating that

By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

This because:

“scientists and scholars…publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment” and “without expectation of payment.” In addition, scholars typically participate in peer review as referees and editors without expectation of payment. Yet more often than not, access barriers to peer-reviewed research literature remain firmly in place, for the benefit of intermediaries rather than authors, referees, or editors, and at the expense of research, researchers, and research institutions.

So, in part OA came to value researchers’ work by giving it the potential of a much larger audience, and in part it came to do what is morally expected of public funded institutions, i.e, that the outcomes they produce benefit the public good.  But we all know that these ideas (Or are they ideals?) cannot be materialised from day to night when there are other (commercial) players involved in the game.

Around the 1960s/70s academic journals started to gain the attention of commercial scholarly publishers who began acquiring the already established, high-quality journals run by non-profit scholarly societies. With research journals published by commercial publishers, dissemination of academic work is inevitably impacted by the provision of knowledge as a commodity for sale. And this has become even more visible now with the struggle to implement OA and the different interpretations different players have of it.

Academia not only yielded the monopoly of knowledge dissemination to publishing houses, but they also supported, even if implicitly, the rather atypical business that publishing houses grew from it. If academic publishing was already a peculiar business before the emergence of the web, the fact that it persists now is even more extraordinary. Simply put, the business model of academic publications is one in which one pays to work, not only once, but twice, and now apparently perhaps even thrice! Institutions pay academics to write research papers that are published in journals which institutions also pay to have access to!! And now apparently there is also the added option of paying an additional fee to have the work of their academics made free online. And this is what the publishing houses are currently calling the Gold Route to Open Access.

This is not my interpretation of what the Gold Route OA option is, nor what BOIA’s statement hints at. However, I do recognise that the language used can lead to different interpretations. When  BOIA put forward two primary strategies for OA:

OA through repositories (also called “green OA”) and OA through journals (also called “gold OA”)

they did not specify what an OA journal should be. It is unclear from their statement if it should include a no-fee policy for authors or not. That has given publishing houses room to play. As such, their interpretation of Gold Route to OA includes a fee. It’s another gold mine for them; one I am not sure academia will be able to afford. And this is where I see institutions and researchers backing down from the OA Movement because it is costing them even more.

Maybe it is high time that academic institutions regained control of knowledge publication. Research funding bodies and researchers may want to support and campaign for no-fee open access journals (there are quite a few out there already, so why not exploit the web in that way and use our own time to free our own knowledge). Otherwise, I fear that the push for the current interpretation of “Gold Route OA” will generate a even wider gap between different research institutions given that their economic power is already so uneven.

In times when academia debates about the openness and transparency of academic work, and the processes associated with it, more questions than answers tend to be formulated.  And as it usually happens, different approaches often co-exist. There is nothing wrong with that. It is only natural when trying to make sense of the affordances that the web, as a space of participation and socialisation, provides. Nonetheless, the latests news on the openness of research publications leave me slightly concerned regarding the misunderstanding between the Open Access Gold Route and the Gold Mine publishing houses are trying to maintain with their take on Open Access. This will however be content for another post as this post relates to some still unripe reflections of mine on the topic of online research ethics. …although one could argue that paying to access publicly funded knowledge also touches on some ethics…!

One of the big questions we are currently debating on twitter deals with the use of  data publicly available online. Given the current events regarding how governments are using information published online by their own citizens, we could conclude that no data is, or for that matter ever was, private! But as researchers interested in the prosumer phenomenon (online users who consume and produce content available on the web) a key issue arises when doing research online:

• Can we use information that is publicly available online, i.e., that can be accessed without a password by any individual, for research purposes?
• What ethics should we observe in this case?

Researching online data that is produced and made available online voluntarily, or involuntarily, by the regular citizen is so new, even to those in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), that we are still trying to make sense of how to go about this. Publications regarding this matter are still scare, and even those that I have had access to deal mainly with the issues of anonymity (Here is a recent example). A big issue indeed, especially in a time where participating online means to create an online digital footprint that not only allows information to be traced back to an individual; but also creates, to a certain extent, a (re)presentation of a given ‘self’, voluntarily or involuntarily… In TEL we call this “Digital Identities” (more on this in a forthcoming post).  Digital identities disclose personal, and sometimes private, information within the online social environments in which individuals interact, we assume, on their own accord. But are they always conscious of the publicness of the information they publish? Do they perceive their participation online as an form of creating and publishing information?

This then begs the question:

• Is, can or should such information be automatically converted into research data? In other words, are we, as researchers, entitled to use any data that is publicly available, even if we claim that it is only being used for research purposes?

My gut feeling is that no, we cannot! Just because the information is publicly available online and therefore accessible to use, I, as a researcher, am not entitled to use it without previously seeking and obtaining consent from its creator. This, obviously, generates more obstacles than those researchers would probably like to experience, but the truth is that collecting publicly available information without the consent of its producers does not seem right to me for the following reasons:

1. We (people engaged in TEL) need to step outside of our own taken-for-granted understanding of online participation, and note that many people don’t realise, or at least have not given it considerate thought, that online communication can be public and that interactions online, by its very nature of written speech are more durable than equivalent forms of face-to-face interaction.
2. Anonymity and confidentiality are topics that need to be discussed with the research participant independently of the type of information we want to use. Just because the content is there available to the world, it doesn’t mean it’s available for the take. That is invading the public sphere of an individual, if that makes any sense(!), because as it becomes research data we will be exposing (transferring even!) it to other public spaces.
3. I truly believe that every research participants has the right to know he/she is one. This is not merely a courtesy on the part of the researcher, it is a right that they have! Content produced online, unless stated otherwise, belongs to its producer and should therefore be treated as such. (….maybe what we need is a creative commons license for research purposes! ]

Niessenbaum, and Zimmer, amongst others, talk about contextual integrity, a theory that rejects the notion that information types fit into a rigid dichotomy of public or private.’ “Instead, there is potentially an indefinite variety of types of information that could feature in the informational norms of a given context, and whose categorization might shift from one context to another.” (Zimmer, 2008,  p.116)

Although I am very amenable to the argument of context, and that nothing is absolute, and everything is relative [getting philosophical now!], I think that the context of research practice begs for informed consent independently of the research data being publicly and privately available. In my opinion, converting online information into research data should always be an opt in, and not an opt out, activity involving those to whom the information belongs.

…but as usual, this is only my 2 cents and I look forward to other people’s views on this.

In times when academia debates about the openness and transparency of academic work, and the processes associated with it, more questions than answers tend to be formulated.  And as it usually happens, different approaches often co-exist. There is nothing wrong with that. It is only natural when trying to make sense of the affordances that the web, as a space of participation and socialisation, provides. Nonetheless, the latests news on the openness of research publications leave me slightly concerned regarding the misunderstanding between the Open Access Gold Route and the Gold Mine publishing houses are trying to maintain with their take on Open Access. This will however be content for another post as this post relates to some still unripe reflections of mine on the topic of online research ethics. …although one could argue that paying to access publicly funded knowledge also touches on some ethics…!

One of the big questions we are currently debating on twitter deals with the use of  data publicly available online. Given the current events regarding how governments are using information published online by their own citizens, we could conclude that no data is, or for that matter ever was, private! But as researchers interested in the prosumer phenomenon (online users who consume and produce content available on the web) a key issue arises when doing research online:

• Can we use information that is publicly available online, i.e., that can be accessed without a password by any individual, for research purposes?
• What ethics should we observe in this case?

Researching online data that is produced and made available online voluntarily, or involuntarily, by the regular citizen is so new, even to those in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), that we are still trying to make sense of how to go about this. Publications regarding this matter are still scare, and even those that I have had access to deal mainly with the issues of anonymity (Here is a recent example). A big issue indeed, especially in a time where participating online means to create an online digital footprint that not only allows information to be traced back to an individual; it also creates, to a certain extent, a (re)presentation of a given ‘self’, voluntarily or involuntarily… In TEL we call this “Digital Identities” (more on this in a forthcoming post).  Digital identities disclose personal, and sometimes private, information within the social environments that are created online and in which individuals interact, we assume, on their own will. But do they always do consciously of the publicness of the information they publish? Do they perceive their participation online as an form of creating and publishing information?

This then begs the question:

• Is, can or should such information be automatically converted into research data? In other words are we, as researchers, entitled to use any data that is publicly available, even if we claim that it is only being used for research purposes?

My gut feeling is that no, we cannot! Just because the information is made publicly online and therefore accessible to use, I, as a researcher, am not entitled to use it without previously seeking and obtaining consent from its creator. This, obviously, generates more obstacles than those researchers would probably like to experience, but the truth is that collecting publicly available information without the consent of its producers does not seem right to me for the following reasons:

1. We (people engaged in TEL) need to step outside of our own taken-for-granted understanding of online participation, and note that many people don’t realise, or at least have not given it considerate thought, that online communication can be public and that interaction online, by its very nature of written speech are more durable than equivalent forms of face-to-face interaction.
2. Anonymity and confidentiality are topics that need to be discussed with the research participant independently of the type of information we want to use. Just because the content is there available to the world, it doesn’t mean it’s available for the take. That is invading the public sphere of an individual, if that makes any sense(!), because as it becomes research data we will be exposing (transferring even!) it to other public spaces.   of its owner.
3. I truly believe that every research participants has the right to know he/she is one. This is not merely a courtesy on the part of the researcher, it is a right that they have! Content produced online, unless stated otherwise, belongs to its producer and should therefore be treated as such. (….maybe what we need is a creative commons license for research purposes! ]

Niessenbaum and Zimmer, amongst others, talk about contextual integrity, a theory that rejects the notion that information types fit into a rigid dichotomy of public or private.’ “Instead, there is potentially an indefinite variety of types of information that could feature in the informational norms of a given context, and whose categorization might shift from one context to another.” (Zimmer, 2008,  p.116)

Although I am very amenable to the argument of context, and that nothing is absolute, and everything is relative [getting philosophical now!], I think that the context of research practice begs for informed consent independently of the research data being publicly and privately available. In my opinion, converting online information into research data should always be an opt in, and not an opt out, activity involving those to whom the information belongs.

…but as usual, this is only my 2 cents and I look forward to other people’s views on this.

A couple of months ago David Walker asked me to review a paper for a new Academic Journal of which he is one of the editors. He told me it was an open access journal focused on practice and I immediately said yes! I just cannot say no to open access or perspectives on practice. I just can’t! So I became a reviewer of the Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice.

As I started going through the first paper I had to review, I noticed that the author’s name was disclosed. There was even a short biography about his academic career. I was intrigued, almost shocked, I must confess. I immediately emailed David reporting the “tragedy” of having learnt the name and background of the author whose article I was about to review. David’s answer was something like this:

You didn’t read the guidelines, did you?!

“Autoretrato” Photo by Flickr ID Sebastian Delmont (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Cough… well, actually I did, but I went directly to “conducting the review” section, ignoring the opening paragraph of the Reviewers Guidelines. How scholastic of me. So here it is:

Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice (JPAAP) journal uses open peer review process, meaning that the identities of the authors and those of the reviewers will be made known to each other during the review process in the following way: the reviewers will be fully aware of the name, position and institution of the authors of the manuscript they currently review, and the authors will be given a signed review with the name, position and institution of the reviewer.

I got the shock of my life at first, but then I decided to give it a go. This was the first time I got involved in open peer reviewing and, as I think it’s important to put into practice what we preach, I went for it. Here are some reflective points about the process of conducting an open peer review. I aimed to:

• be on my best behaviour – I made sure I allocated plenty of time to read and digest the paper. I read it several times. I tried to understand and deconstruct it the best way I could, before I submitted the review
• give thorough feedback  – I tried to justify every point I made (I think I achieved that better in the second paper I reviewed)
• provide constructive and also friendly feedback – Nothing annoys me more than reviews  that are dry and harsh in their comments. I tried to use language that aimed to provide suggestions and stimulate new thinking. I think I still have some work to do in this area, but I hope I’m getting there
• read the paper as it is written, not as I would write it – I think that’s a crucial point in any type of review, but one that is often forgotten. I have felt many times that reviews were made on the assumption that the article should be written in the style and perspective of the reviewer rather than that of the author’s

You may think that this doesn’t differ at all from any review process, and in fact it should not. But the feelings and the thoughts that go through your mind as you disclose your identity to the author are both of vulnerability and commitment to do a good job. [Not much different from the feelings of the author of the article who submits his/her work to you, hey?! So we are on the same boat!]

There is something about the open peer review process. With transparency comes visibility, a more acute sense of responsibility of your role as reviewer and maybe the fact that your reputation is on the line matters too!  And that can only be good.

However, I still have unanswered questions that in a sense do show my vulnerability as a reviewer.

• would I feel the same if I knew/have worked with the author whose paper I was reviewing?
  • Would I feel comfortable giving them my feedback?
  • Would I be influenced or even intimidated by my knowledge of their practice/research?
  • Would I be too tough, or too soft, on them?

I guess you can always refuse to review someone’s paper if those feelings arise and you are not comfortable with it… but these questions did come to mind.

As we move towards more open peer reviewing processes, and I hope more initiatives like this start to emerge, I’d like to see more dialogue between the reviewer and the author. So far it’s still a monologue, and since we disclosed identities, could we also open up the discussion? ~ just a thought.

I have written periodic updates on the work we have been doing for the UKCES on open data, developing an open API to provide access to Labour Market Information. Although the APi is specifically targeted towards careers guidance organisations and towards end users looking for data to help in careers choices, in the longer term it may be of interest to others involved in labour market analysis and planning and for those working in economic, education and social planning.

The project has had to overcome a number of barriers, especially around the issues of disclosure, confidentiality and statistical reliability. The first public release of the API is now available. The following text is based on an email sent to interested individuals and organisations. Get in touch if you would like more information or would like to develop applications based on the API.

The screenshot above is of one of the ten applications developed at a hack day organised by one of our partners in the project, Rewired State. You can see all ten on their website.

The first pilot release of LMI for All is now available and to send you some details about this. Although this is a pilot version, it is fully functional and it would be great if you could test it as a pilot and let us know what is working well and what needs to be improved.

The main LMI for All site is at http://www.lmiforall.org.uk/.  This contains information about LMI for All and how it can be used.

The APi web explorer for developers can be accessed at http://api.lmiforall.org.uk/.  The APi is currently open for you to test and explore the potential for  development. If you wish to deploy the APi in your web site or application please email us at graham10 [at] mac [dot] com and we will supply you with an APi key.

For technical details and details about the data go to our wiki at http://collab.lmiforall.org.uk/.  This includes all the documentation including details about what data LMI for All includes and how this can be used.  There is also a frequently asked questions section.

Ongoing feedback from your organisation is an important part of the ongoing development of this data tool because we want to ensure that future improvements to LMI for All are based on feedback from people who have used it. To enable us to integrate this feedback into the development process, if you use LMI for All we will want to contact you about every four to six months to ask how things are progressing with the data tool. Additionally, to help with the promotion and roll out of LMI for All towards the end of the development period (second half of 2014), we may ask you for your permission to showcase particular LMI applications that your organisation chooses to develop.

If you have any questions, or need any further help, please use the FAQ space initially. However, if you have any specific questions which cannot be answered here, please use the LMI for All email address lmiforall [at] ukces [dot] org [dot] uk.

…one day, who knows, maybe a full paper? But where should I publish it?

Open Access Cookie by Flickr ID Bliblioteekje (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I wasn’t sure I should do this, but I decided I could!

I just came back from a writing session with colleagues from the School of Education and it was rather refreshing. We discussed and practiced the writing of abstracts. This is what I came up with:

 

The field of academia is punctuated by implicit and explicit goals and rules that aim to regulate academic practice.

This paper draws on data from a qualitative study involving academic researchers who challenge the notions of research practice through their use of the social and participatory web as well as through the epistemologies of practice they develop as networked learners.

Using a Bourdieuian  lens, I discuss how research assessment exercises, as an example of symbolic practice, enables the field of academia to preserve or accumulate symbolic capital by (explicitly) promoting traditional forms of scholarship.

I suggest that the tensions between the field and the habitus of digital scholars not only hinder digital innovation in research, but also in learning and teaching practices. I conclude by arguing the need to align institutional, national and international research benchmarks with the practices and principles proposed by and for the so called digital society.

[Please note this is work in progress… always a good disclaimer (cough)]

The abstract above is based on my PhD research [as if you hadn’t had enough of my PhD by now!…but there you go]. I have submitted a paper recently and now want to start working on another one…potentially focusing on the topic described in the abstract. But I still have no idea where to publish it. I just know that it needs to be in an Open Access publication. Any ideas, suggestions where to publish it are very welcome. Critical feedback on the abstract is equally appreciated. Thank you. x

A quick and overdue update on the Labour Market Information for All project, which we are developing together with Raycom, the University of Warwick and Rewired State and  is sponsored by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES).

LMI for All will provide an online data portal bringing together existing sources of labour market information (LMI) that can inform people’s decisions about their careers.  The database will contain robust LMI from national surveys and data sources providing a common and consistent baseline to use alongside less formal sources of intelligence. Due for release at the end of May 2013, access to the database will be through an open API. the results of queries can then be embedded by developers in their own web sites of apps. We will also provide a code library to assist developers.

The project builds on the commitment by the UK government to open data. despite this, it is not simple. As the Open Data White Paper (HM Government, 2012)highlights,  data gathered by the public sector is not always readily accessible. Quality of the data, intermittent publication and a lack of common standards are also barriers. A commitment is given to change the culture of organisations, to bring about change: ‘This must change and one of the barriers to change is cultural’ (p. 18).

We have talked to a considerable number of data providers including government bodies. It is striking that all have been cooperative and wishing to help us in providing access to data. However, the devil is in the detail.

Much of the data publicly collected, is done so on the condition that is is non disclosive e.e. that it is impossible to find out who submitted that data. And of course the lower the level of aggregation, the easier it is to identify where the data is coming from. And the more the data is linked, the more risk there s of disclosure.

We have developed ways of getting round this using both statistical methods (e.g. estimation) and technical approaches (data aggregation). But it remains a lot of work preparing the data for uploading to our database. And I guess that level of work will discourage others from utilising the potential of open data. It may explain why, transport excluded, their remain limited applications built on the open data movement in the UK.

It may suggest that the model we are working on, of a publicly funded project providing access to data, and then providing tools to build applications on top of that data, could provide a model for providing access to public data.

In the meantime if you are interested in using our API and developing your own applications for careers guidance and support, please get in touch.

The European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) starts next Tuesday in Cadiz in Spain. Some 2000 delegates will take part, organised through 28 networks covering different areas and themes in education.

Not able to attend yourself? Pontydysgu are working with EERA, who run the conference, to provide alive stream of the four keynote speeches. We will be also broadcasting three live half hour internet radio programmes from the conference. The details are below (all times are Central European summer Time).

The live video can be accessed through the conference web site (full details will be on the site in the next 48 hours).

The radio programmes can be accessed at http://uk2.internet-radio.com:31022/live.m3u. Click on the link and the stream will open in your MP3 player of choice (e.g. iTunes).

Wednesday 19 September
14:00 – 15:00 Keynote 1 – What is ‘the Human’ about the Humanities today?  – Rosi Braidotti
14:00 – 15:00 Keynote 2  – Two different realms. Politics and Educational Knowledge in European history – Marcelo Caruso

Thursday 20 September

10:30 – 11:00 Conference radio programme 1
14:00 – 15:00 Keynote 3 – What is Wrong with the What-Went-Right Approach in Educational Policy? – Gita Steiner-Khamsi
14:00 – 15:00 Keynote 4 – Constitution, Education and Research – Fuensanta Hernandez Pina

Friday 21 September
10:30 – 11:00 Conference radio programme 2
15:00 – 15:30 Conference radio programme 3