Big Opportunities in Access to "Small Science" Data

Abstract

A distributed infrastructure that would enable those who wish to do so to contribute their scientific or technical data to a universal digital commons could allow such data to be more readily preserved and accessible among disciplinary domains. Five critical issues that must be addressed in developing an efficient and effective data commons infrastructure are described. We conclude that creation of a distributed infrastructure meeting the critical criteria and deployable throughout the networked university library community is practically achievable.

Keywords

• Small science
• Commons
• Licenses
• Metadata
• Provenance
• Archiving
• Peer review