[open-science] Working Group on Open Data in Science

Fri May 27 06:34:32 UTC 2011

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:53 AM, Andy Turner <A.G.D.Turner at leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
> I am trying my best to make things and keep them open, but inevitably, some of the data
> I use is not open.

I use quite a significant amount of data that is not open. That still
comes with science: you do not have that kind of control of data of
which you are not the rights owner.

However, if every scientist would contribute a bit of his own data as
Open Data, it would result in a snow ball effect. It keeps building up
until closed data becomes irrelevant (and likely inferior).

> I am trying to keep a distinction between the two tracks of simulation model data, the
> open one and the other one.

This is indeed very important. This is also why services like
IsItOpenData? are important, because it must be clear what is Open and
what is not.

> Still, I appreciate that open is not a black and white issue and there are shades of grey.

I rather see everything sciency Open, but with the current academic
funding system, this is simply unrealistic, IMHO.

Egon

-- 
Dr E.L. Willighagen
Postdoctoral Researcher
Institutet för miljömedicin
Karolinska Institutet (http://ki.se/imm)
Homepage: http://egonw.github.com/
LinkedIn: http://se.linkedin.com/in/egonw
Blog: http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/
PubList: http://www.citeulike.org/user/egonw/tag/papers