NISO meeting on Open Research Data Standards

I spent the day in Baltimore yesterday at the National Information Standards Organization. We discussed the role of standards in Research Data, with a large focus on Open Data (see meeting blog). The FriendFeed discussion is here. A publication will result from this and I'll link to it when available.

A lot of the discussion revolved around the citation of datasets. My own view (and something that Cameron Neylon champions as well) is that a good way to encourage sharing of data is to make saving datasets convenient and part of the researcher's workflow. I recommended 4 simple options:

1. use the open JCAMP-DX format for XY datasets (e.g. spectra) and Robert Lancashire's JSpecView for easy manipulation in a browser
2. use GoogleDocs
3. use Google DataSets
4. do Open Notebook Science using your favorite tool (we use Wikispaces)

Then, following the Southampton Resolution on Open Science, after your paper comes out share these datasets.