Panton Principles for Open Data
"Science is based on building on, reusing and openly criticising the published body of scientific knowledge. For science to effectively function, and for society to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavours, it is crucial that science data be made open.
"By open data in science we mean that it is freely available on the public internet permitting any user to download, copy, analyse, re-process, pass them to software or use them for any other purpose without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. To this end data related to published science should be explicitly placed in the public domain."
This is the preamble to the Panton Principles, written by Peter
Murray-Rust, Cameron Neylon, Rufus Pollock, and John Wilbanks, with help of the
members of the Open Knowledge Foundation
Working Group on Open Data in Science.
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Advancing Science
The Pantone Principles are an important outline for the sharing of data. The problems that we are trying to solve today require interdisciplinary approaches and collaborative effort. The creativity that we see in the digital world is largely stimulated by the opportunities that arise from remixing, mashups and combinations of digital objects that were in many cases unplanned or not even conceived by the creator of the original works. In today's world of scientific discovery, every mechanism to bring the collective power of a combined intellectual approach to data analysis and modelling needs to be pursued.
Within the scope of open data is the importance of making results available from research that did NOT produce significant results. Why? Because while the original experiments may not have proved successful in rejecting the proposed null hypotheses for which the experiments were originally designed, there is still information there in data from experiments that reached statistically non-significant conclusions.
The size of this iceberg is enormous. By some estimates some 90% of the data from scientific investigations remains dark. How many experiments are inadvertently replicated wasting precious dollars in the pursuit of scientific discovery? We have to do better and open data is one important approach in that direction.
-pdl-
Condensed version of the Pantone Principles
For those who want a succinct statement about what the Pantone Principles are all about, consider the following summary:
1. When publishing your data, make an explicit and robust statement of your wishes.
2. Use a recognized waiver or license that is appropriate for data.
3. Non-commercial and other restrictive clauses should not be used.
4. Explicit dedication of data underlying science into the public domain via PDDL and CCZero is strongly recommended and ensures compliance with both the Science Commons Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data and the Open Knowledge/Data Definition.
(http://www.arl.org/sparc/innovator/panton.shtml)