Zzzoot

The Canadian Science Policy Conference is to held in Toronto, October 28-30, 2009. While the five themes , sub-panels and speakers looking both interesting and relevant, I am disappointed and perhaps a little alarmed that there appears to be no (explicit) mention of research data issues, research data management or research data archiving, despite the series of Canadian consultations examining these issues ( National Consultation on Access to Scientific Research Data (NCASRD) , 2004; National Data Archive Consultation Building Infrastructure for Access to and Preservation of Research Data , 2002; Data Access in Canada: Issues for Global Change Research” (Royal Society of Canada), 1996 ) and indicating the pressing need for 1) A research data archiving strategy and policy; 2) A research data archive. I think this is an issue that has too long been neglected (although there are some positive signs, like International Polar Year ), impacting Canadian science and innovation, especiall...

Tom Brzustowski (ex-NSERC president, now University of Ottawa RBC Financial Group Professor in the Commercialization of Innovation and Chair of the board Institute for Quantum Computing , Waterloo) is giving a talk this Friday January 16 entitled " Looking for Suggestive Patterns in Canadian Industrial R&D Spending ". Abstract: R&D spending is an imperfect, but widely used, measure of innovation. This paper describes the search for suggestive patterns in Canadian industrial R&D spending, as reported in the data published annually by Re$earch Infosource Inc. A very important feature of this proprietary data base is that the companies involved are named, and thus the data can be combined with information from other sources. The discussion has three parts. The first deals with the "calibration" of the data base, and a discussion of its limitations, beginning with the reporting of R&D spending. The second describes and explains the performance of a...