Open Data and Data Management - Issues and Challenges

In recent years a number of changes in scientific research took place, under the umbrella of the ‘open science’ label. Open access has essentially been introduced, and researchers from the sciences took the lead when introducing the preprint arXiv many years ago. Many researchers followed the path of open source by making their simulation codes publicly available. Presently the introduction of open data (and open data management plans) are on the horizon (or already introduced) by many European Funding Agencies.

However, the concept of ‘Open Data’ is also widely debated. While in certain fields the full disclosure of research data is suitable and straightforward, and happens thus naturally, in others it can become a burden and possibly affect research productivity. Its implementation leads to the following questions:

‚Can data of very diverse fields, from biology, chemistry, pharmacy, physics, geology, meteorology, material science, particle physics, mathematics, astronomy, etc. be treated in the same way?
‚How should one deal with data that are subject to competition with research groups from other (non-European) countries where other rules are in place?
‚What kind/level of data products must be disclosed?
‚How large is the effort to disclose the data in a useful way and are there enough resources?