The Coleridge Initiative: Show US the Data

The Coleridge Initiative is delighted to announce the launch of a major Kaggle competition – Show US the data - that challenges data scientists to help show how publicly funded data and evidence are used to serve science and society. Data, evidence, and science are critical if government is to effectively combat pandemics, manage climate change and reduce coastal inundation, support the development of a diverse and innovative STEM workforce, fight Alzheimer’s disease, reduce child hunger and increase food production, maintain biodiversity, and address many other challenges. Yet much of the information about the data necessary to inform evidence and science is locked inside publications.  This work can tie evidence to action - If data scientists can find how datasets are referenced in publications quickly, and at scale, the government can catalog answers to our most pressing questions for immediate application to the world’s critical issues.

Previous competitions have shown that it is possible for machine learning and natural language processing to be put to work to find the hidden-in-plain-sight data citations. Now teams of Machine Learning and Natural Language processing experts will compete for $90,000 in prizes.  There will be seven prizes awarded for the teams that have the most precise methods of finding datasets in over 20,000 publications - the first place prize is worth $30,000; second place $20,000; third place $15,000.

But beyond the prizes, the team’s work will help governments leverage their data as a strategic asset – and show the value of data produced with Federal funding.  The Foundations for Evidence- based Policymaking Act requires the federal government to modernize its data management practices and produce data inventories. This effort will provide agencies with an open and transparent way to  do so – to assess how data are being used and provide a scientific basis for evidence based decision making.

The competition is now live at https://www.kaggle.com/c/coleridgeinitiative-show-us-the-data !  The final submission deadline is June 22, 2021.