Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open content, and open access. The philosophy behind open data has been long established (for example in the Mertonian tradition of science), but the term "open data" itself is recent, gaining popularity with the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web and, especially, with the launch of open-data government initiatives such as Data.gov.
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The concept of open data is not new; but although the term is currently in frequent use, there are no commonly agreed definitions (unlike, for example, Open Access where several formal declarations have been made and signed).
Open data is often focused on non-textual material such as maps, genomes, connectomes, chemical compounds, mathematical and scientific formulae, medical data and practice, bioscience and biodiversity. Problems often arise because these are commercially valuable or can be aggregated into works of value. Access to, or re-use of, the data is controlled by organisations, both public and private. Control may be through access restrictions, licenses, copyright, patents and charges for access or re-use. Advocates of open data argue that these restrictions are against the communal good and that these data should be made available without restriction or fee. In addition, it is important that the data are re-usable without requiring further permission, though the types of re-use (such as the creation of derivative works) may be controlled by license.
A typical depiction of the need for open data:
Numerous scientists have pointed out the irony that right at the historical moment when we have the technologies to permit worldwide availability and distributed process of scientific data, broadening collaboration and accelerating the pace and depth of discovery…..we are busy locking up that data and preventing the use of correspondingly advanced technologies on knowledge
[1] John Wilbanks, Executive Director, Science Commons
Creators of data often do not consider the need to state the conditions of ownership, licensing and re-use. For example, many scientists do not regard the published data arising from their work to be theirs to control and the act of publication in a journal is an implicit release of the data into the commons. However the lack of a license makes it difficult to determine the status of a data set and may restrict the use of data offered in an Open spirit. Because of this uncertainty it is also possible for public or private organizations such as IEEE to aggregate said data, protect it with copyright and then resell it.
Under "Toward Open Data" Connolly (2005, v.i.) gives two quotations:
Open data can come from any source. This section lists some of the fields that publish (or at least discuss publishing) a large amount of open data.
The concept of open access to scientific data was institutionally established with the formation of the World Data Center system, in preparation for the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958.[3] The International Council of Scientific Unions (now the International Council for Science) established several World Data Centers to minimize the risk of data loss and to maximize data accessibility, further recommending in 1955 that data be made available in machine-readable form.[4]
While the open-science-data movement long predates the Internet, the availability of fast, ubiquitous networking has significantly changed the context of Open science data, since publishing or obtaining data has become much less expensive and time-consuming.
In 2004, the Science Ministers of all nations of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), which includes most developed countries of the world, signed a declaration which essentially states that all publicly-funded archive data should be made publicly available.[5] Following a request and an intense discussion with data-producing institutions in member states, the OECD published in 2007 the OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding as a soft-law recommendation.[6]
Several national governments have created web sites to distribute a portion of the data they collect.
Additionally, other levels of government have established open data websites, such as the City of Ottawa, Canada [1] and the state of California, USA [2].
Arguments made on behalf of Open Data include the following:
It is generally held that factual data cannot be copyrighted.[10] However, publishers frequently add copyright statements (often forbidding re-use) to scientific data accompanying publications. It may be unclear whether the factual data embedded in full text are part of the copyright.
While the human abstraction of facts from paper publications is normally accepted as legal there is often an implied restriction on the machine extraction by robots.
As the term Open Data is relatively new it is difficult to collect arguments against it. Unlike Open Access, where groups of publishers have stated their concerns, Open Data is normally challenged by individual institutions. Their arguments may include the following:
The goals of the Open Data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements.
Several funding bodies which mandate Open Access also mandate Open Data. A good expression of requirements (truncated in places) is given by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) [13]:
Note the fundamental requirement to be able to replicate the experiment.
Other bodies active in promoting the deposition of data as well as fulltext include the Wellcome Trust.
Several mechanisms restrict access to or reuse of data. They include: