The latest Australian National Data Service (ANDS) newsletter is now available. This issue examines ANDs, the RDA and the next two years from the perspective of researchers.

Including:

• Data citation and licensing
• Getting data a seat at international tables
• Using data to fight malaria
• Seal data used in Oceanography research
• Connecting data and NHMRC grants

Data publishing has been gaining momentum, due to an increasing awareness of the benefits in publishing and re-using data, alongside the growing requirements of funding bodies that data be made publicly available. By publishing your research data you can:

Figshare Partners with Open Access mega journal publisher PLOS

Figshare announced this week that they have gone into partnership with PLOS to host the supplemental data for all seven PLOS journals. For ease of access to view the data, PLOS will provide a widget, which will allow the users to view the data alongside the content.

Hot topic in the news today, is the latest article published in Nature - Towards Practical, high -capacity, low-maintenance information storage in synthesized DNA, which demonstrates a new technique to store and transport human-made data.

Data registry re3data.org: registry of research data repositories was launched in December 2012.

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.

Searching for government data? The Australian Government has made available an extensive range of public datasets at http://data.gov.au/. Data.gov.au states that it aims to provide an easy way to find, access and reuse public datasets from the Australian Government and state and territory governments, encouraging users of the datasets to develop tools and applications for all Australian to use.

Apps developed using Australian Government datasets include:

With the temperatures expected to rise in Queensland today. Why not explore the weather data available via the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Climate Data Online provides access to a wide range of weather data including:

Big data is in the news at the moment. The Conversation, "which is an independent source of analysis, commentary and news from the Australian university and research sector" have published three thought provoking articles on the topic over the last few month they include:

Australian Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) data discovery portal is now LAUNCHED. TERN's mission is "to link the science and scientists both within and across disciplines" through a data portal which will collect, store and distribute important data.

Major datasets from Australian scientists are discoverable in this portal, they include: