Version User Scope of changes
Aug 29 2009, 12:22 AM EDT (current) Johanna.Nichols 309 words added
Aug 28 2009, 11:47 PM EDT Johanna.Nichols

Changes

Key:  Additions   Deletions

Common practices:
Several institutions and projects have large databases with cross-linguistic typological information on a number of languages. (List with links to be added.) The information has generally been gathered over some years from published grammars, one's own fieldwork, consultations with experts, etc. and represents an extremely large outlay of time and resources. In some cases language data is solicited in return for authorship credit for that portion of the database. Ways that database owners might provide peer review for these contributions have occasionally been discussed but probably never implemented.
Several projects make some or all of their data available, via a search interface or as downloadable data files. There are no field-wide standards for content of fields, data format, etc. but this does not seem to be an obstacle to finding and using data. It is standard to link data to language names using ISO codes. There is a growing consensus that data is most useful if it is free of one's own lumpings (thus, e.g., not "large/medium/small" for inventories of elements such as morphological cases or phonemes, but the actual number; not "VO/OV" but an actual specific basic word order).

Needed practices:
Consensus on how to give database authors and owners credit for their work while also making data publicly available. Practices include: Make data publicly available and request a citation. Offer data on request in exchange for citation. Offer data on request in exchange for coauthorship. (All three models are used in other fields.)
Peer review for databases as a whole. (This is separate from the question of how the database owner obtains peer review for individual contributions to the database.) Accuracy of entries and usefulness, comprehensiveness, empirical and theoretical adequacy, etc. of data categories need review.
Appropriate credit (on one's CV and with one's employing institution or prospective employer) for creation and maintenance of databases.