Spaced-OoooO-Out ::

Its Open Access Week this week and our publisher at the Journal of Maps, Taylor and Francis, are running a range of activities promoting OA. So go check out the resources to look at what OA has to offer and, not least (!), my own article on implications and stakeholders in moving to OA.

James O’Connor and Mike J. Smith (2016)
GIM International


With the boom in the use of consumer-grade cameras on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveying and photogrammetric applications, this article seeks to review a range of different cameras and their critical attributes. Firstly, it establishes the most important considerations when selecting a camera for surveying. Secondly, the authors make a number of recommendations at various price points.

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Well the dust has settled on Peer Review Week, a low profile (!) event celebrating the moderating role of peer review scholarly communication. It’s good to see lots of high profile sponsors although a few notable gaps so I would encourage those organisations to get behind this initiative as it’s essential in all aspects of public life, working with government and communicating to the broader general public.

Sense About Science were active as part of their advocacy role of science in public life and its worth pointing to some of their resources for those that may have missed them last week:

I Don’t Know What to Believe: in their own words This leaflet is for people who follow debates about science and medicine in the news. It explains how scientists present and judge research and how you can ask questions of the scientific information presented to you.
Peer review: the nuts and bolts: a pamphlet target at early career researchers to make sense of the whole academic publishing scene.

And for those ECRs wanting some hands on guidance then go along to the next Peer Review Workshop.

Mike J. Smith (2016)
The Holocene


Elsevier’s Modern Cartography Series, edited by Professor DR Fraser Taylor, is a long-running occasional series that currently comprises seven volumes, the first published in 1991. With a hia-tus since 2006, Elsevier has injected some new vigour with a title planned for 2017 and this volume, Reflexive Cartography, pub-lished in 2015.

John K.Hillier, Ioannis A Kougioumtzoglou, Chris R.Stokes, Michael J. Smith, Chris D. Clark, Matteo Spagnolo (in press)
PLOS ONE


Sediments beneath modern ice sheets exert a key control on their flow, but are largely inaccessible except through geophysics or boreholes. In contrast, palaeo-ice sheet beds are accessible, and typically characterised by numerous bedforms. However, the interaction between bedforms and ice flow is poorly constrained and it is not clear how bedform sizes might reflect ice flow conditions. To better understand this link we present a first exploration of a variety of statistical models to explain the size distribution of some common subglacial bedforms (i.e., drumlins, ribbed moraine, MSGL). By considering a range of models, constructed to reflect key aspects of the physical processes, it is possible to infer that the size distributions are most effectively explained when the dynamics of ice-water-sediment interaction associated with bedform growth is fundamentally random. A ‘stochastic instability’ (SI) model, which integrates random bedform growth and shrinking through time with exponential growth, is preferred and is consistent with other observations of palaeo-bedforms and geophysical surveys of active ice sheets. Furthermore, we give a proof-of-concept demonstration that our statistical approach can bridge the gap between geomorphological observations and physical models, directly linking measurable size-frequency parameters to properties of ice sheet flow (e.g., ice velocity). Moreover, statistically developing existing models as proposed allows quantitative predictions to be made about sizes, making the models testable; a first illustration of this is given for a hypothesised repeat geophysical survey of bedforms under active ice. Thus, we further demonstrate the potential of size-frequency distributions of subglacial bedforms to assist the elucidation of subglacial processes and better constrain ice sheet models.

It’s Impact Factor time!! All the movers and shakers will be looking through the citation reports from Thomson Reuters to see how the different publications are performing and find out who’s up and who’s down!! Yet again it’s very pleasing to report an increase at the Journal of Maps, this time going from 1.19 to 1.44. As I said last year, the 1.0 boundary is a watershed as that is the point at which there are more citations than articles published. This year’s editorial summarises this performance showing that the big change was an extra issue which increased the articles from 62 (2014) to 72. Given the in-built lag in the 2 year Impact Factor I would ordinarily expect a decrease so what this shows is that we have a “rising roll” of incoming citations. In short - excellent performance. Downloads finished the year on 33,000, up from 26,000.

And don’t forget to look at this year’s “Best Map” winner which is available for free download from Taylor and Francis.

Well, just when you thought the Finch Report had had the last word in open access publication and access to government funded research… we find that the government itself is, errr, withholding access to government funded research! Yesterday Sense About Science published its report entitled Missing Evidence.

Yes its true, but rather than a pre-designed political malfeasance to withhold information and evidence what the report has found is

“weak rules and chaotic systems. It turns out that we don’t know what has become of millions of pounds of government-commissioned research. Government itself doesn’t know: some departments have no idea how much research they have commissioned, whether it was published, or where it all is now.”

Not surprisingly then the recommendations are for a standardised central register, clear definitions of “external research” and prompt publication. All very sensible and it is desirable that we both bring government into line with the rest of the sector and, more importantly, make evidence openly available in a timely manner that can inform public debate and so democracy. It is part of the checks and balances of open government allowing elected officials to be held accountable for the decisions they make.

Following on from my earlier post from Sense About Science, the government have now suspended implementation of the anti-lobbying clause for further consultation. Whilst not removed (yet), this is good news and allows researchers to set out a sensible case.

A small milestone with a paper from my PhD (Smith, M.J. and Clark, C.D. (2005) “Methods for the visualisation of digital elevation models for landform mapping.” Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 30, 7, 885-900) hitting its century of citations - yes 100! Bringing flashbacks just looking at it again!!!

Yes, believe it or not the government wants to STOP scientists from influencing Parliament when they have funded research. As SenseAboutScience note:

you will be as worried as we are about the government’s plans to add a new anti-lobbying clause to all public funding, to prevent it being used for ‘activity intended to influence or attempt to influence Parliament, Government or political parties, or attempting to influence the awarding or renewal of contracts and grants, or attempting to influence legislative or regulatory action’.

Yes, there is a rationale…

It follows a report in 2014 that government funds go to some groups who use them more to influence policy than to do what they’re intended for. That may be true. But you need only give a moment’s thought to the breadth of this new clause to realise that in an attempt to get rid of a small irritant, the government is causing far more damage. This is not the behaviour of a government at ease with itself. It is defensive and paranoid.

… but it’s daft and not something and open and transparent society should have. So sign the petition, write to the Prime Minister, to your MP and to Matt Hancock, the Minister for the Cabinet Office who is responsible for the clause.

Surviving a Global Zombie Attack… now who would have thought biomathematics could be so useful!!

Great news for one of my MSc dissertation students last year, Jen Rozier, as she has just been awarded the RGS GISc Research Group dissertation prize. Her project Vegetation Response and Recovery in the 20 years following the 1982 eruption of El Chichón volcano: A Remote Sensing Approach looked at effects of vegetation recovery following the El Chichon eruption and correlating them with potential topographic effects and proxies using multi-temporal Landsat data.

This has also now been summarised in a short article for Sterling Geo (the UK reseller for ERDAS Imagine) titled El Chichón: Vegetation Response and Recovery Following a Volcanic Eruption.

The Map Room highlighted the Journal of Maps Best Maps today in this blog post. Our Best Maps are freely available, but since being published in partnership with Taylor and Francis we have become subscription based which means everything up to 2012 is open access.

FYI, and I’ve written about this in my editorials on several occasions, publishing a journal is not a “no-cost” opration. Increasingly, in order to meet the expected standards of readers, authors, funders and the general public, there are a number of quality requirements. So, in short, someone, somewhere, at somepoint, has to pay for publication. That can be the reader (subscription), the author (open access) or some hybrid (cross-subsidy!). It’s something we always keep under review at the Journal of Maps - unfortunately no model suits everyone.

Smith, M.J. (2016)
Journal of Maps


What is a map? A seemingly innocuous question that is deftly handled by the International Cartographic Association (ICA, 2015) as

“a symbolised representation of geographical reality, representing selected features or characteristics, resulting from the creative effort of its author’s execution of choices, and is designed for use when spatial relationships are of primary relevance.”“

For the first 50 people, get your free eprint ofManual mapping of drumlins in synthetic landscapes to assess operator effectivenessHillier, J., Smith, M.J. et al

Smith, M.J., Anders, N. and Keesstra, S.D. (in press)
Earth Surface Processes and Landforms


Datasets containing large numbers (>10,000) of glacial lineaments are increasingly being mapped from remotely sensed data in order to develop a palaeo-glacial reconstruction or “inversion”. The palimpsest landscape presents a complex record of past ice flow and deconstructing this information into a logical history is an involved task. One stage in this process requires the identification of sets of genetically linked lineaments that can form the basis of a reconstruction.

This paper presents a semi-automated algorithm, CLustre, for lineament clustering that uses a locally adaptive, region growing, methodology. After outlining the algorithm, it is tested on synthetic datasets that simulate parallel and orthogonal cross-cutting lineaments, encompassing 1,500 separate classifications. Results show robust classification in most scenarios, although parallel overlap of lineaments can cause false positive classification unless there are differences in lineament length. Case studies for Dubawnt Lake and Victoria Island, Canada, are presented and compared to existing datasets. For Dubawnt Lake 9 out of 14 classifications directly match incorporating 89% of lineaments. For Victoria Island 57 out of 58 classifications directly match incorporating 95% of lineaments. Differences are related to small numbers of unclassified lineaments and parallel cross-cutting lineaments that are of a similar length.

CLustre enables the automated, repeatable, assignment of lineaments to flow sets using defined user criteria. This is important as qualitative visual interpretation may introduce bias, potentially weakening the testability of palaeo-glacial reconstructions. In addition, once classified, summary statistics of lineament clusters can be calculated and subsequently used during the reconstruction process.

It’s that time of year again, yes Impact Factors are out and whether we like it or not authors and journals, alongside all those who rank them, will be sifting through the data to see who’s up and who’s down!! So with that in mind, its very pleasing to report that the Journal of Maps has again seen its impact factor rise this time to 1.2. The 1.0 boundary seems like a watershed as that is the point at which there are more citations than articles published. This year’s editorial provides a summary of general performance last year and whilst the number of articles stayed largely the same, we are seeing increasing submissions and downloads (and are probably up about 10% on submissions so far this year). As a result of this we have introduced an extra issue for 2015 which will allow us to increase the amount we publish.

This not only illustrates the resurgence in cartography and so the importance that maps play in a range of academic disciplines, but also how relevant they are to contemporary research. And there is no better example than this year’s “Best Map” winner which is available for free download from Taylor and Francis.

O’Connor, J. and Smith, M.J. (2015)
Geomatics World

Surveys using UAVs and photogrammetry are becoming ubiquitous. It is in the community’s best interests to remember the fundamentals of image capture. James O’Connor and Mike J Smith of the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, Kingston University review the main considerations for image capture when undertaking an aerial survey using consumer grade cameras and make recommendations for acquiring the best imagery.

I wanted to highlight the 2015 International Data Rescue Award in the Geosciences which is run by and IEDA and Elsevier. As they say on the site, IDRA was created to to raise awareness of the importance of securing access to science’s older research data, particularly those with poor preservation outlook or fragile storage conditions, and to urge efforts towards creating robust electronic datasets that can be shared globally.

This is something I have long had an interest in, going back to terrain modelling I undertook for my MSc and MSc degrees. In particular it was a focus of my PhD where I looked at a range of published and unpublished materials on the former Irish ice sheet. Some time after my PhD (!) I realised there was a dataset of striae observations of considerable size and this led the the compilation, mapping and publication along with subsequent interpretation of the data. This then formed one of the examples used in my recent paper on data rescue in geomorphology.

It’s worth looking at the introductory section to the GeoResJ paper (see below) as it covers some more general ground about what we consider to be data rescue (and something I also blogged on)… I’m not going to repeat it here, but it’s salient to note that it’s anything we lose “access” to. For example I blogged about try to make PDFs of my MSc Thesis available and how, in the space of 20 years, this particular file format is near obsolete (but not quite unreadable). Flipping this on it’s head, what formats should we storing data in? Within the context of spatial data, I blogged about this a little while ago and much of this remains pertinent today. Indeed, the topic of preservation is so important that research council projects need to have a data deposition plan - however this is often file format agnostic and really a well conceived plan should take this in to consideration as well. At Wageningen University, all research students need to come up with a data management plan as part of their research - an important element.

The take away… if nothing else consider how you might use data collected as part of your research in the future and that is both in the physical media it is stored on and the format it is stored in.

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Smith, M.J., Keesstra, S. and Rose, J. (2015)
GeoResJ


This paper considers legacy data and data rescue within the context of geomorphology. Data rescue may be necessary dependent upon the storage medium (is it physically accessible) and the data format (e.g. digital file type); where either of these is not functional, intervention will be required in order to retrieve the stored data. Within geomorphological research, there are three scenarios that may utilize legacy data: to reinvestigate phenomena, to access information about a landform/process that no longer exists, and to investigate temporal change. Here, we present three case studies with discussion that illustrate these scenarios: striae records of Ireland were used to produce a palaeoglacial reconstruction, geomorphological mapping was used to compile a map of glacial landforms, and aerial photographs were used to analyze temporal change in river channel form and catchment land cover.