• Hodson, Simon
• Ma, Xiaogang
• Wyborn, Lesley
• Cox, Simon J. D.

Abstract

Scientific data are being generated at an ever increasing rate, whilst citizen science is proliferating and providing much valuable data. Open source software makes tools readily available at no cost. Cloud computing is ubiquitous: no longer does a researcher/research institute need to invest in substantial storage and processing infrastructure.The internet provides unprecedented online access to data, tools and compute resources and there is now an unrivaled opportunity for global research challenges to be addressed by people from anywhere in the globe: participation is no longer the purview of the high income countries.The stumbling block for this vision is that data from multiple sources and diverse communities are hard to bring together because of differences in standards, vocabularies and data structures.In order to be able to share data, information and services,standards related to the retention, discovery and access to these data will need to be developed. Many, if not most, of the decisions about what to store, what standards to apply and what are the minimum required metadata lie within the relevant peak international science and social sciences unions: they have a new role in the establishment of standards that enable data to be born connected across natural and social science boundaries and beyond. But it is not just about promoting the development and endorsing the standards, the unions also have a role in long term governance to ensure that as new major research challenges appear and technologies change, the required standards evolve to support them.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy