I get some pretty extraordinary requests for our projects' data sometimes. I feel we have a moral obligation to make results public of publicly funded projects but I'm not sure many people are aware of what they're really asking for when they ask for an unpublished dataset. 1/13

The Skaldic Project has been going since 1997. It has received funding for parts of the project but the overwhelming majority of the work has been done by brilliant scholars, mainly women, in their spare time (holidays, retirement). 2/13

I would estimate the unpaid work the mostly women have contributed to be worth conservatively US $5 million, the overwhelming majority of that done by Kari and Margaret. That work has helped many careers, but they get little more than credit as volume editors. 3/13

It take about a day for an experienced scholar to prepare a single stanza of skaldic poetry for the edition. At least two further person-days of work are put into each stanza on average by the 'Learned Ladies'. They almost never then put their name on the edition itself. 4/13

So some people then write to the one man on the board (me) to ask for basically everything these mostly women have done, published or not. I patiently explain the complex situation with rights and recognition, but this rarely seems to be acknowledged. 5/13

I make public everything I can once it has been adequately reviewed and subject to other agreements. Brepols, who publish the print volumes for the Skaldic Project, allow us to do this after a long embargo period. On 31 Dec ALL finalised editions will be free online. 6/13

People ask for privileged access to this valuable data on the apparent assumption that nobody else has thought of using it - not because it's not ready, not suitable or not within my power to grant it. Sometimes they could get all their answers simply by *reading the text* 7/13

Sometimes they assume that I will supply the Lexicon Poeticum data with it, even though the web apps make clear it is not at a stage that can be referenced. They don't offer to help get it to that stage though, even though I would acknowledge that contribution in turn. 8/13

We nevertheless supply a huge amount of data just to help people find what they need for their research: words, manuscript information, references to previous editions, etc. This is frequently not acknowledged in research papers that have clearly used these resources. 9/13

I feel my achievement lies not so much in the digital resources I design and publish, but in the methods that allow experts to turn their great research into digital gold. 10/13

But the right to decide how that content is used should belong to those who created it and/or with the body that funded it. Where the resources have come from the individual's unpaid time, the right lies solely with them. 11/13

I understand that it is frustrating that the data is published but not fully open, but we have in fact made as much open and/or free as possible, despite a decades-old publication arrangement. But most of what people really ask for is not in fact finished 12/13

Otherwise it would already be public! 13/13

This is a thread about requests for unpublished research data (I may have inadvertently posted it in reverse order)