The following guest post is from Iain Hrynaszkiewicz who is Managing Editor at leading open access publisher BioMed Central and a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Data in Science.
Having already been scooped by some encouraging and eloquent activity
in the open data blogosphere here, here, here and here (perhaps there are more), a few final comments
and future thoughts on the 2009 BioMed Central Open Data award.
Our internal scientific, and external
academic, editors were vital in the candidate selection process this
year, but next year we hope to involve more readers. Any article published
in a BioMed Central journal (including those on physics and chemistry
portals) in 2010 can be considered for the next award so we encourage
all our readers – and editors – to contact
us if they read or, even
better, re-use any useful data published in 2010.
Thanks again to the judging panel –
Lee Dirks, John Wilbanks, Peter Murray-Rust, Rufus Pollock and Cameron
Neylon – and to Microsoft Research for supporting the award.
Without their contributions the award simply would not have been possible.
As Cameron Neylon acknowledges in his blog about the awards licensing of open data is an important issue,
and heterogeneity in approaches to data licensing was identified in
the examples of original data published in BioMed Central’s journals
identified during the selection process. We’re keen to develop a consensus
and code of practice on licensing and re-use that best serves the needs
of authors, editors and the open data community, in the many different
fields incorporated in BioMed Central’s journals.
Another important issue we hope will
be addressed by future nominees is standardization of data. Not only
do we want articles that include raw data, but we are also looking for
data in fully harvestable, machine readable and re-usable formats where
possible, and appropriate. Over the coming weeks and months BMC Research Notes will be ratcheting up its involvement in helping
to define domain-specific data file standards, including a publication
of guidance and best practice. Any potential contributors are, again,
encouraged to get
in touch.
This post is by a guest poster. If you would like to write something for the Open Knowledge Foundation blog, please see the submissions page.
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