The National Academies Press has published a compendium of academic thinking about sharing academic data, "The Future of Scientific Knowledge Discovery in Open Networked Environments: Summary of a Workshop." It is available to download free as a PDF.

David Wojick, writing for the scholarly kitchen, notes that while the word "data" is not in the title, it occurs over 1,200 times in the report.

The report is largely an exercise in envisioning the possible opportunities for scientific discovery presented by extensive data sharing, based on large-scale, present-day examples. Read his full article here.