To study the brain from molecules to behaviour, neuroscientists face the challenge of communicating an emerging wealth of information in coherent accessible forms.

Neuroimaging and the discipline of cognitive neuroscience have grown together in lock-step with each pushing the other toward an improved ability to explore and examine brain function and form. However successful neuroimaging and the examination of cognitive processes may seem today, the culture of …

At TEDxSummit, Walters Art Museum curator William Noel gave this fascinating talk on revealing the lost codex of Archimedes. The TED Blog caught up with him to talk about the digital future of a traditionally closed institution: the art museum.

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"Finally, we estimated that 29.8% to 32.9% of total resources are used to generate withheld datasets, implying that an important portion of research funding does not produce shared knowledge."

A heartfelt celebration of Glaxo's announcement this morning from Harlan Krumholz.

Cute video on open data and data licensing!

An open book. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The Institute of Medicine sponsored a workshop today that is focused on the sharing of clinical research data. I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on the importance of open science and our responsibility to ensure that information that is critical to decisions people [...]

Measuring value CREATION rather than value CAPTURE is the key to understanding why free/open is an economic plus.

How to "free your metadata" by improving its quality via Google Refine. Source of exercises?

"One effect of passing laws requiring standardized, digital data is to marginalize all data that can’t be standardized or digitized, and to marginalize the people who don’t control the process of standardization."

The mission of this project is to help researchers to "discover more, faster" by initiating an open data-sharing project within the [child-]developmental science community.

Background Scientific research in the 21st century is more data intensive and collaborative than in the past. It is important to study the data practices of researchers – data accessibility, discovery, re-use, preservation and, particularly, data sharing. Data sharing is a valuable part of the scientific method allowing for verification of results and extending research from prior results.   Methodology/Principal Findings A total of 1329 scientists participated in this survey exploring current data sharing practices and perceptions of the barriers and enablers of data sharing. Scientists do not make their data electronically available to others for various reasons, including insufficient time and lack of funding. Most respondents are satisfied with their current processes for the initial and short-term parts of the data or research lifecycle (collecting their research data; searching for, describing or cataloging, analyzing, and short-term storage of their data) but are not satisfied with long-term data preservation. Many organizations do not provide support to their researchers for data management both in the short- and long-term. If certain conditions are met (such as formal citation and sharing reprints) respondents agree they are willing to share their data. There are also significant differences and approaches in data management practices based on primary funding agency, subject discipline, age, work focus, and world region.   Conclusions/Significance Barriers to effective data sharing and preservation are deeply rooted in the practices and culture of the research process as well as the researchers themselves. New mandates for data management plans from NSF and other federal agencies and world-wide attention to the need to share and preserve data could lead to changes. Large scale programs, such as the NSF-sponsored DataNET (including projects like DataONE) will both bring attention and resources to the issue and make it easier for scientists to apply sound data management principles.

Over the last few months we’ve run a series of workshops with representatives from cultural heritage institutions in Paris, London and Berlin. Across these sessions we’ve gathered a large amount of feedback on the problems – legal, technical and economic – faced by institutions trying to open up cultural content and data. Below we’ve listed […]

Britain's Royal Society wants the government and universities to give equal stature to datasets and to publications.

The White House hopes for an explosion of commercial application development.