If you ask scientists “Why do science?”many of the answers will be along the lines of “In order to advance human knowledge.” But if the goal of science is to contribute to the sum of human knowledge, why don’t scientists place more emphasis on sharing data? Wouldn’t the most efficient path to advancing knowledge be to pool our information and work together? Scientist may have idealistic intentions and magnanimous motivations, but the fact remains, they do not share well.
So why don’t scientist share data well? Nature recently addressed this question in a special issue dedicated to data sharing that is available free of charge online.
Data sharing is an incredibly important issue and I am very happy to see it being addressed by such a respected and widely-read publication. With modern, high-throughput techniques bringing us into an age of data-driven science it may be more important now than ever before. But sharing data has always been central to science, it takes many minds and many perspectives to extract the full value of knowledge from data. As Cambridge professor and Rufus Pollock says : “The best thing to do with your data will be thought of by someone else.” (Voices from the future of science: Rufus Pollock of the Open Knowledge Foundation)
Nature’s special data sharing issue contains:
An editorial titled Data’s shameful neglect
A feature by Bryn Nelson called Data sharing: Empty archives
Two collaboratively written opinion pieces
Prepublication data sharing
Post-publication sharing of data and tools
Any one of them provides a thought-provoking read. Taken together they make a thorough statement on where we are now and where we need to get to in order to take full advantage of the massive amount of experimental data being generated.
by Lisa Green
If you ask scientists “Why do science?”many of the answers will be along the lines of “In order to advance human knowledge.” But if the goal of science is to contribute to the sum of human knowledge, why don’t scientists place more emphasis on sharing data? Wouldn’t the most efficient path to advancing knowledge be to pool our information and work together? Scientist may have idealistic intentions and magnanimous motivations, but the fact remains, they do not share well.
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