"Person" Information Displayed on the Map -- Value adds and risks

OSSci Interest Groups Map of Science
1

I just had a great call will a colleague about MOSS and we discussed some interesting points. I’d love any thoughts or feedback.

MOSS is a mapping of tools, people, and publications. This post is exploring only the People aspect.

Value Adds of People on the Map

  1. The map can help OSS contributors be seen and get credit for their contributions to the OSS ecosystem.
  2. If we can show contributions over time, the map can help people new to the space gain recognition by illustrating continued contributions to OSS. Maybe, for example, a node or edge darkens in color the longer a person has continuously been contributing to a project.
  3. The map can help collect DEI information on the ecosystem which would be very useful for various endeavors and to various stakeholders

Risks of People on the Map

  1. PII needs to be managed very carefully. GDPR and privacy all need to be considered when adding people to the map.

A potential solution to PII management is to allow an individual to “claim” their node on the map. If “Jon” is a contributor to “OSS Project 1”, and if I can prove that I am “Jon”, I can control the information displayed when my node is clicked.

I’d love to add to these lists of value adds and risks if anyone has any thoughts.

2

Great point!

Looking at arxiv.org, authors of published research papers have their name listed on the publication, hyperlinked to a list of all their publications. Example: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.03928

As for GitHub, contributors to (publicly listed) projects have their name and username exposed, hyperlinked to their profile page, which may include additional public information they have provided (e.g., location) and the list of projects they have been involved with. Example: https://github.com/GT4SD/gt4sd-core

Not sure if there is much more that needs to be captured, particularly anything that isn’t already public anyway.

I would imagine that MOSS – to the extent possible – will link/merge a “person, type = author” node and “person, type = contributor” node, if it’s clear it’s the same person. That may constitute a level of data enrichment that warrants discussion. Though again, both items are public knowledge to begin with.