Openning by D. T. Lee
Distinguished Guests, Vice President Wang, Director Chen, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to the Symposium on Common Use Licensing of Publicly Funded Scientific Data and Publications. I am D. T. Lee, chairman of CODATA Taiwan. CODATA, Committee on Data for Science and Technology, is a multi-disciplinary international organization established in 1966 under the International Council of Science (ICSU). As you know, former President of Academia Sinica, Dr. Yuan-tseh Lee, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1986, just got elected to be the President of ICSU last year and will assume the role of President in 2011. The mission of CODATA is to strengthen international science for the benefit of society by promoting improved scientific and technical data management and use. The theme of this symposium is to promote scientific and technical data management and use.
CODATA Taiwan is the CODATA national committee of Taiwan under the auspices of Academia Sinica. With the help of the Board on Research Data and Information, the National Academies of US, in particular, Paul Uhlir, and the three distinguished speakers from abroad, and with your participation, I am most grateful that CODATA Taiwan is able to organize this symposium at Academia Sinica. I would also like to thank Dr. Tyng-Ruey Chuang, Executive Secretary of CODATA Taiwan, for helping put together the program and thank Winnie, and many staff members for their help with the organization of this symposium.
I would like to thank Dr. Andrew H.-J. Wang, Vice President of Academia Sinica and Dr. Ming-Syan Chen, Director of the Research Center for Information Technology Innovation (or CITI), Academia Sinica, who are with us today, for their presence, and support.
Let’s welcome Vice President Wang and Director Chen to say a few words.
Openning by Vice President Wang
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Good Morning! On behalf of Academia Sinica, it is my great honor to welcome all of you to participate in the Symposium on Common Use Licensing of Publicly Funded Scientific Data and Publications. I am particularly pleased to be here to express my appreciation to our guests from the United States and the Philippines, for not only speaking at this symposium but also in helping organize it. I would like to thank our colleagues from the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, the Taiwan Livestock Research Institute, and Academia Sinica, for speaking at this meeting.
Academia Sinica is a government sponsored research institute that continues to produce a wealth of research results in all aspects of humanity and social sciences, life sciences, and mathematical sciences. Researchers at Academia Sinica not only publish extensively but also engage in the generation, collection, archiving, and integration of a massive amount of research datasets.
Here are just some of the better known data products and services facilitated by Academia Sinica: The Survey Research Data Archive (SRDA) provided at the Survey Research Center, the Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility (TaiBIF) maintained at the Biodiversity Research Center, and the union catalog produced by the Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP) whose program office is located at and coordinated by Academia Sinica.
All of the above data services are accessible to researchers worldwide. At the same time, we are also aware of the needs to further make our data available to the research communities and to all the citizens, and for allowing them greater freedom in using the data we provided. How better to serve these needs, I believe, is closely related to how we define ourselves as a publicly funded research institute. For this, I look forward to learning from your experience and expertise in using public licenses in releasing scientific data and publications.
I am confident that the discussions at this symposium will be an important step in our understanding of the problems we have, and the likely approaches to providing good solutions. You will certainly raise many questions that cannot be satisfied with simple answers. I believe, however, the questions themselves will help in mapping the problems we have, and give reasons for more research and collaboration.
Before I close, allow me to again thank the distinguished speakers for sharing with us their thought and experience. I wish to thank CODATA Taiwan and Research Center for Information Technology Innovation (CITI) for organizing and hosting the symposium. I wish you all a most enjoyable and fruitful symposium. For friends coming from abroad, I wish you a very pleasant stay in Taipei.
