Think about when disaster strikes. An earthquake. A tsunami. News and information online generally appear very quickly in a variety of ways - through Facebook, blogs, tweets, YouTube, news feeds and web sites. The result? Atomisation.

The Federal Government has funded a number of initiatives aimed at boosting Australian research infrastructure. The $50m Research Data Storage Infrastructure project is one, and the $47m National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NecTAR) project is another.

The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) is investigating data licensing by universities. But what does licensing involve?

According to a recent report, Data centres: their use, value and impact,

The Dataverse Network Project has launched as an easy means of sharing research data.

We will be hearing more and more about data licensing as the drive to share data gathers force. If you are interested in sharing your data openly, there are existing licenses available to you. The Open Knowledge Foundation has produced a Guide to Open Data Licensing to help navigate this maze.

The latest version of Share, the ANDS newsletter, is online. On page 6, Adrian Burton talks about connecting datasets to publications via a DOI.

Data sharing has always been part of scientific method, since it allows other researchers to verify and build on existing results.