A Revolution in Open Science: Open Data and the Role of Libraries (...

"This talk was given by Prof. Geoffrey Boulton of the University of Edinburgh at LIBER's 42nd annual conference in Munich. Here is a brief summary: 'The data storm that has been unleashed by novel means of data acquisition, manipulation and their instantaneous communication have posed both great challenges and opportunities for science. The challenge is to maintain scientific self-correction, which depends on concurrent publication of concepts and the underlying evidence. The opportunity is to exploit massive and complex data volumes in creating new knowledge. Both are non-trivial tasks. The former requires ‘intelligent openness‘.The latter requires new ways of thinking and new forms of collaboration, which make major demands on scientists, their institutions, those that fund science and those who publish it. Open access publishing is important, but open data is fundamental to scientific progress. In a post-Gutenberg era, can the library maintain its historic role as an efficient repository of scientific knowledge? Can it provide support for the creation of new knowledge? What responsibilities should it discharge, and how? What skills are required by those discharging the library function? And how do we achieve a realisable objective, of having all the publications online, all the data online, and for the two to be interoperable? Learn more about LIBER at www.libereurope.eu"