Scholarly Communication and Open Access: Datasets

Both government and scholars have recognized the value of making datasets more openly available. Government at all levels from city and municipal, to provincial to national and international are making data more available. Especially under so-called Government 2.0 or City 2.0 initiatives, various datasets have been liberated and made more available for citizens.

Academics have also recognized the value of making their research data much more widely available. Many who practice deposit articles in institutional repositories are also depositing the datasets with the articles or reports deposited. This enables other scholars the opportunity to validate or corroborate the conclusions that the original researcher(s) drew from the data. Sharing data more openly also enables scholars to examine the data and perhaps make new discoveries. Many research granting agencies have either made depositing the dataset created a requirement for research grants or have started to indicate some preference for datasets derrived from the research project or study being widely distributed or more widely available. There are complications in sharing data. Generally, these complications include balancing privacy issues with data integrity and dealing with organization and formatting issues with the data.