-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: Nature: Agencies join forces to share data
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:44:15 -0500
From: Youngblood, Dawn <[log in to unmask]>
To: Maps, Air Photo & Geospatial Systems Forum <[log in to unmask]>
The problem I have seen with data sharing is that unless it is required,
people do not do it. Many scientists (1) do not want others checking
their work, although there is the ethic of allowing others to test
repeatability and they would never admit it (2) do not want others to
"beat them to the punch on their own data" by taking it a step further
before they, the originators of the data, get around to it. In
archaeology, anyway, voluntary data depositories have not been
successful so far.
Dawn Youngblood
[log in to unmask]
214-768-2285
-----Original Message-----
From: Maps, Air Photo & Geospatial Systems Forum
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Maps-L
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 11:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Nature: Agencies join forces to share data
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jennifer McLennan" <[log in to unmask]>
To: maps-l
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 5:21 PM
Subject: Nature: Agencies join forces to share data
> From the March 22 issue of Nature. For the full text, see
> http://ealerts.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/hc530SpivX0HjB0BOpY0EA
>
> Excerpt:
>
> The US government is considering a massive
> plan to store almost all scientific data generated
> by federal agencies in publicly accessible
> digital repositories. The aim is for the kind of
> data access and sharing currently enjoyed by
> genome researchers via GenBank, or astronomers
> via the National Virtual Observatory, but
> for the whole of US science.
> Scientists would then be able to access data
> from any federal agency and integrate it into
> their studies. For example, a researcher browsing
> an online journal article on the spread of a
> disease could not only pull up the underlying
> data, but mesh them with information from
> databases on agricultural land use, weather and
> genetic sequences.
> Nature has learned that a draft strategic
> plan will be drawn up by next autumn by a
> new Interagency Working Group on Digital
> Data (IWGDD). It represents 22 agencies,
> including the National Science Foundation
> (NSF), NASA, the Departments of Energy,
> Agriculture, and Health and Human Services,
> and other government branches including the
> Office of Science and Technology Policy.
> The group's first step is to set up a robust
> public infrastructure so all researchers have
> a permanent home for their data. One option
> is to create a national network of online data
> repositories, funded by the government and
> staffed by dedicated computing and archiving
> professionals. It would extend to all communities
> a model similar to the Arabidopsis
> Information Resource, in which
> 20 staff serve 13,000 registered
> users and 5,000 labs.
>
> --
> Jennifer McLennan
> Director of Communications
> SPARC
> (202) 296-2296 ext. 121
> (202) 872-0884 Fax
> http://www.arl.org/sparc
>
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