I began paragliding a few years ago. It’s maybe the most weather-dependent sport in the world. We often fly in mountainous areas, very close to the ground. We need to know about local effects like thermal updrafts, clouds growth, mountain-breeze, foehn wind, and all sorts of other micro weather effects.

Producing a widely used set of data, rather than a long list of self-written articles, he said, "should be the highest honor in our field."

Public Citizen brief on copyright in state laws.

Research on practices to share and reuse data will inform the design of infrastructure to support data collection, management, and discovery in the long tail of science and technology. These are research domains in which data tend to be local in character, minimally structured, and minimally documented. We report on a ten-year study of the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. We found that CENS researchers are willing to share their data, but few are asked to do so, and in only a few domain areas do their funders or journals require them to deposit data. Few repositories exist to accept data in CENS research areas.. Data sharing tends to occur only through interpersonal exchanges. CENS researchers obtain data from repositories, and occasionally from registries and individuals, to provide context, calibration, or other forms of background for their studies. Neither CENS researchers nor those who request access to CENS data appear to use external data for primary research questions or for replication of studies. CENS researchers are willing to share data if they receive credit and retain first rights to publish their results. Practices of releasing, sharing, and reusing of data in CENS reaffirm the gift culture of scholarship, in which goods are bartered between trusted colleagues rather than treated as commodities.

After a spectacular case of data fraud in the field of social psychology surfaced in The Netherlands in September 2011, the Dutch research community was confronted with a number of questions. Is this an isolated case or is scientific fraud with data more common? Is the scientific method robust enough to uncover the results of misconduct and to withstand the breach of trust that fraud causes? How responsible and reliable are researchers when they collect, process, analyse and report on data? How can we prevent data fraud? Do we need to adapt the codes of conduct for researchers or do we need stricter rules for data management and data sharing?This paper discusses the conclusions and recommendations of two reports that were published recently in consequence of this data fraud. The reports are relevant for scientific integrity and trustworthy treatment of research data. Next, this paper reports on the outcomes of enquiries in data cultures in a number of scientific disciplines. The concluding section of this paper contains a number of examples that show that the approach towards data sharing is improving gradually. The data fraud case can be regarded as a wake-up call.

If done correctly, the administration's triple challenge to the status quo can make information sharing with the public and other agencies a routine byproduct, rather than a special case.

"This study found two key determinants affecting researchers' willingness to publish their data. First is data management in terms of data management skills and organization support. Second is the acknowledgement of the data set's originator in terms of appreciation and legal and policy requirements."

On May 9, President Obama signed an open data executive order and released an open data policy. Only a couple of weeks later, on May 22, Data.gov responded by launching a new data catalog on an open source data management system called CKAN, which, the site says, will enable the central implementation of the Open Data Policy, as it will harvest the data inventories that federal agencies will be creating under the directive. LJ caught up with members of the library and data-driven research communities to see what this may mean for their missions.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants…

The eventual replication of the data from the Reinhart-Rogoff paper on 90% debt/GDP threshold has sparked vibrant discussion on the impact of error-ridden research on austerity policies around the …

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, along with Bill Gates, and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, kicked off a two-day international open data

Traditionally, there has been a blithe assumption that more innovation occurs when patents are granted than when they are not.  But as...

This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Economics Blog. Another economics scandal made the news last week. Harvard Kennedy School professor Carmen Reinhart and Harvard University profes…

Excuses for not opening data.

Concerns about opening up data, and responses which have proved effective (or “How to make friends and get them to give you their data”)  Christopher Gutteridge, University of Southampton Alexander Dutton, University of Oxford  This document is inspired by the open data excuses bingo card.  Some...