New Rules on Sharing Scientific Data

Last week, a significant change went into effect at the National Science Foundation: The agency will now require researchers to submit data-management plans with their grant proposals.

Open government advocates hailed the move as the latest in a series of steps that are expanding public access to work done with taxpayer money. The policy will not go so far as to mandate public sharing of all data, which in this context could mean anything from glacier images to scientific papers to computer code. But it will “require people to essentially justify why they choose not to be open,” says Beth Noveck, a professor at New York Law School.

You can find lots of detailed information about the change at the NSF and the Association of Research Libraries sites.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education