Gauging the Impact of Requirements for Public Access to Data

Funded by the National Science Foundation, this meeting, and the second meeting, will generate discipline-specific responses from the Mathematical and Physical Sciences research communities to the federal policy requiring open data[1] and the recently-released NSF policy statement on open data[2]. In order to decide how and what to preserve for public consumption, and in what manner the data will be stored and accessed, a series of dialogues is required.  Discussions within individual disciplines must reach a consensus on data preservation procedures and data access guidelines consistent with discipline-specific expectations for data re-use, access policies, and the level of burden implied by conservation that is placed on the individual investigator.  These workshops are designed to “take the pulse” of the research community on these issues.  A final report containing suggestions for best practice and implementation will be submitted to the NSF upon completion of the workshop series.

 

The first workshop was held last fall, and produced a draft report which summarized the challenges facing the scientific community as we move towards open access to research data.  The report also makes some suggestions as to what steps can be taken in order to develop the appropriate infrastructure and policies that are required in order to make open access part of the natural scientific workflow.  A summary of the workshop and the draft report can be found at our project web site, https://mpsopendata.crc.nd.edu/.   We are now in the process of publicizing the reports main points and conclusions and gathering feedback. 

 

In this second workshop, we will collect and try to integrate the feedback we will have received from the various disciplines on the conclusions of our report.  The Final Report will be submitted to NSF upon completion of the workshop series.  We expect the workshop to be held over two days this fall (2016) in Arlington, VA.