What is open science? A post on Nautilus discusses an essay on the topic by Frank Gibson of Newcastle University, UK. His role in an e-neuroscience project, Gibson writes, exposed him to a life-science domain in which “data sharing and publicly exposing methodologies has not been readily adopted”, largely owing to privacy issues and data set sizes.
The Nature journals’ policies on data availability can be found on our author and reviewers’ website. There, you can comment on emerging policies on data availability in a range of disciplines.
The Postgenomic website, Gibson notes, produces an “up-to-the minute list of the open science discourse”. “Although early days,” he continues, “maybe even the ‘open science group’ on Scintilla will be the place in future for fostering the open science community.”
NPG’s Scintilla site collects data from hundreds of news outlets, scientific blogs, journals and databases and allows users to find and share information. It is free to join, so take a look and, if you wish, contribute.
(All articles and websites can be accessed from the Nautilus URL above.)
Nature 448, xiii; 5 July 2007