Namchul Shin

“I am going to my grave with my disk drive in my cold dead hands.” So a senior scientist told a junior researcher, who related the tale at a 2013 US National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop on the reuse of physical samples in the geosciences. Sharing — of data sets, metadata, models, software and other resources — promises to speed discoveries, improve reproducibility and expand economic development. But it requires people to change. Overcoming personal reluctance is doubly difficult because many aspects of the scientific enterprise undermine sharing. Right now, most departments, funders and journals presume that data are proprietary from collection to publication..

Read More »