BioScience | Mobile

abernard102@gmail.com 2015-07-29

Summary:

"Thirty years ago, Stewart Brand famously declared, 'Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive.' He correctly predicted that information would become increasingly easy and cheap to share but that data would become increasingly valuable. We now live in a data economy. Business models of leading firms, from Google to Domino's Pizza, are based on information. However, a growing chorus of our scientific peers is working to persuade us that all data should be freely shared. Society makes no such argument for other foundational economic assets. As stewards and interpreters of data, the scientific community is at a signficant crossroads, highlighted by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) recent release of its 2-year plan to 'expand public access to the results of its funded research.' Although the NSF plan is explicit about a model for sharing publications resulting from NSF-funded research, the question of how and when to share data remains unresolved. There is an excellent reason for the lack of a clear path: The instinct to share data runs hard against the principle that science must be based on the entire range of possible data. However, some information sources will never be free. We must determine how we will interact with—and, most importantly, exchange—information with the rapidly growing data-generating and -using community, which increasingly extends beyond academic researchers. In such a diverse community, it is unlikely that free exchange is feasible as the sole norm. Being inclusive within this new world of data probably means developing multiple arrangements for exchange ..."

Link:

http://m.bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/04/20/biosci.biv052

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.data oa.economics_of oa.nsf oa.usa oa.funders oa.mandates oa.green oa.obama_directive oa.repositories oa.policies

Date tagged:

07/29/2015, 07:21

Date published:

07/29/2015, 03:21