Seeking open review of provocative data publication essay

Peter Fox and I have submitted an essay to the Data Science Journal entitled "Is data publication the right metaphor?". If accepted, the essay would be part of a special issue resulting from the inaugural conference of the new ICSU World Data System.

In this essay we discuss the importance of metaphor in framing how we think, and we critically examine the data publication and several other metaphors. Our intention is to be somewhat provacative and to spark a conversation in the community about how we conceive of, describe, and evolve the overall data management enterprise.

While the paper is submitted for formal peer-review, the DSJ editors have also allowed us to make the essay available for open community review. The essay is available at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/546900/parsons_fox_metaphor_dsj_open.docx. We encourage everyone to read it and to provide constructive critique in the comments of this blog.

Apologies for cross posting, but we really want to get the word out. 

Thank you,

Mark Parsons and Peter Fox