Open Data Means Better Science

The following post is by Jenny Molloy, coordinator of the Open Science Working Group at the Open Knowledge Foundation.

We are very pleased to announce the publication of an article detailing the working group’s aims and achievements in PLoS Biology’s Community Pages.

‘The Open Knowledge Foundation: Open Data Means Better Science‘ has already had over 1800 article views and offers a fantastic opportunity to engage the biological community in the work we do and raise awareness of the importance of open data in science.

Published in the same edition was a Perspectives piece tackling an issue that the working group has taken a great interest in – the use of non-commercial clauses in licenses for open access articles. In ‘Why Full Open Access Matters‘, Professor Michael Carroll, a Creative Commons bord member and Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University states “We are living through a moment of fundamental opportunity [for text and data mining, innovative reuse of article material]. Let’s be clear. Only those publishers willing to fully seize this opportunity deserve to call their publications “open access.””.

A lively discussion has been taking place on the open-science and okfn-discuss mailing lists and a plan has been compiled to survey the policies of funders and journals as well as to generate a resource pack on the use of non-commercial clauses and the downstream effects of applying such licenses. Please join the mailing list and the conversation if this is an issue you feel strongly about.