The Public Domain of Digital Research Data

II. Science Policy View

II.1. Background

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are radically increasing the scale, scope and speed of the Global Science System. A growing proportion of research budgets is spent on the production of data. Access to the right digital data at the right time and place is becoming of paramount importance for the success of scientific endeavours. Good stewardship of publicly funded research data-a public resource-requires good access regimes. With ever larger datasets being created and maintained, and with the increased possibilities for data reuse, there is an urgent need for science policy to address the issues of access to and sharing of research data in science.

II.2. Bits of Power

The seminal Report from the US National Research Council on Global Issues in Access to Scientific Data was appropriately named "Bits of Power". Digital data are central to scientific work and as such represent a growing resource of scientific, social, political and economic power. (Bits of Power, see also the other National Research Council's publications The Digital Dilemma and A Question of Balance). Digital data can be seen as the raw material to be processed into research products of various kinds. Efficient processing requires low access barriers.

II.3. Digital Opportunities

Making good use of the power of the increasing resources of digital data requires a well defined, systematic policy approach. Current ways in which data management is being handled in many scientific fields call to mind the image of a train loaded with valuable minerals that has some trouble reaching its destination. There are varying combinations of producers, middlemen and customers, the specification of the cargo is not always clear, some of it is delivered at inaccessible places, most of it is only partially used and - since storage is often non-existent - a lot of it just gets dumped in the end. Consequently, the digital opportunities available to scientific fields remain unrealized or thwarted.

II.4. Institutional Upscaling

Researchers in fields like astronomy and physics deal with petabytes of data distributed through an enormous global DATAGRID. In other important research fields, use of expensive data resources often seems sub-optimal. Systematic re-use of research data will increase the quality and productivity of research in life sciences, biodiversity, climate change, medical research, atmospheric research, social & behavioural research, to name but a few areas. Quality, productivity and efficiency of research can be increased if due attention is paid to interoperability, wider dissemination and long term storage of data sets.

The growth in demand and supply of scientific data relies on an institutional upscaling that tracks these changes. Instead of looking at datasets as incidental outcomes of specific projects, data should be seen from the perspective of an integrated process in which the collection, processing, use, dissemination, preservation and archiving are inextricably linked. Eventually all data related activities should be investments in the floating scientific capital that represents the "content" of a sustainable infrastructure for the Global Science System.