... Academics and those who fund their research should be acutely interested in the proposition that geospatial data developed for scientific purposes can be, in a Web environment, a resource whose value increases with the number of researchers who use it. ... If researchers properly document, archive and publish their data and methodologies using available Web technologies, standards and best practices, many benefits accrue ...
Geospatial academics worldwide ought to note also the significance to the research community taken by the recently installed Obama administration in the US, which has resulted in the appointment as co-chairs of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Harold Varmus, co-founder of the Public Library of Science and former director of the US-NIH, and Eric Lander, a lead researcher in the Human Genome Project and founding director of the Broad Institute (a joint MIT and Harvard institute which addresses the effectiveness of "a new, collaborative model of science focused on transforming medicine)". Varmus is one of the most high-profile advocates of Open Access and the role of government in providing open access, and both the Human Genome Project and the Broad Institute are practitioners of open data. In this context, is it not then obvious and provocative to consider the potential importance to geospatial information science of recognizing the GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems), within the US federal government as well as the world scientific community, to be an initiative that is similar to and as important as the Human Genome project?
The authors support a movement toward Open Access in all the sciences that produce and use geospatial data. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 4/08/2009 12:41:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
