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#scidata16: Open data should be easy
There’ll always be reasons not to share data. It’s time we stop making excuses and start making plans, says Atma Ivancevic.
On the morning of October 26, 2016, a group of scientists convened in London to discuss the state of open data. The third Publishing Better Science through Better Data conference kicked off with morning tea, international introductions, and furious scribing from @roystoncartoons. The premise was simple: “Today is all about being open”, said conference chair Iain Hrynaszkiewicz. We settled in to learn the advantages of data sharing at both the individual level and for the scientific community at large.
“Open data should be easy,” said Dr Jenny Molloy from the University of Cambridge as she explained the importance of building a data management plan. She pulled up a poster of a missing black backpack: “CASH REWARD” it read, “contains 5 years of research data which are crucial for my PhD thesis!” I laughed along with everyone else, internally reflecting how similar my life had been before I discovered version control.
Think you don’t need a research data management plan?
Why you need to collaborate
Collaborating, formally or otherwise, is a huge component of your future (and current) success – even if you’re in the early stages of your career as a graduate student or postdoc.
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Why? It’s how science works today – even in academia. You can’t do it all on your own — you need to work with others who have expertise in different areas to identify the right research questions, to ensure that your experiments answer the questions properly and that your data are robust, to fully interpret results and understand their broader implications and ramifications (as well as potential commercial application in some cases).