PhD Position on Assessing the value of – open - data (MSCA-ITN ODECO)

Updated: over 2 years ago
Deadline: 30 Aug 2021

The EU Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska Curie ITN project ‘ODECO: Towards a Sustainable Open Data ECOsystem’ (see www.odeco-research.eu) is a four-year project involving 15 PhD projects covering each a specific part of the open data ecosystem. The central aim of ODECO is to train the next generation of creative and innovative early stage open data researchers and unlock their creative and innovative potential to address current and future challenges in the creation of user driven, circular and inclusive open data ecosystems.  

Current developments in the field of open data are characterised as highly fragmented. Open data ecosystems are often developed in different domains in isolation of each other and with little involvement of potential users, resulting in approaches that significantly limit open data reusability for users. This reduces innovation and the ability to create new valued added goods and services. Isolated domains also undermine interoperability for users acting as a barrier to data sharing. Efforts are also uncoordinated in open data training and research, where multidisciplinary approaches are scant.  

Bringing together different sectors (research, private sector, government, non-profit) and different perspectives (public administration, law, business, engineering), ODECO aims to address the central challenge of realizing a user driven, circular and inclusive open data ecosystem. Through its novel research and training programme, ODECO will provide early stage researchers with relevant open data knowledge, skills and research experience.

ODECO has two open positions for a PhD fellowship at KU Leuven: 


  • One position on Assessing the value of – open - Data at the Spatial Applications Division Leuven (SADL)
  • One position on Open data and public values at the Public Governance Institute

Tasks

This particular ESR-position on ‘Assessing the value of – open - data’ at the Spatial Applications Division Leuven (SADL)’ is related to the individual research project on ‘Value assessment and (re-)distribution in sustainable ODECO’. 

The objective of this research project is to analyse and assess the value that is created and captured in open data ecosystems, in order to contribute to a just redistribution of value within the ecosystems. 

Combining and integrating theories, approaches and methods from the ecosystem domain and the open data domain, the sub-objectives are:


  • To develop a framework for assessing the distribution of value of open data ecosystems, based on a detailed investigation of relevant literature and related practices;
  • To measure value distribution in the open data ecosystem by applying the assessment framework to real cases in Belgium and Finland (comparative case study approach)
  • To investigate models and approaches for redistributing value across different stakeholders in open data ecosystems

During the PhD fellowship, the candidate will conduct this research and prepare scientific articles presenting the research at conferences and in journals. To enable the candidate to do this successfully, KU Leuven offers personal and professional training courses in the form of doctoral school, in which the candidate will participate (the fee is paid by the project and there are no additional costs for this). Furthermore, in addition to her/his scientific supervisors, the applicant will receive an independent senior researcher as mentor, to aid her/his personal career development. 

As a Marie Curie ITN researcher, the candidate will have the opportunity to conduct practical internships at world leading universities and case studies at excellent open data institutions through the EU ITN network.  



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