The Panton Principles for Open Data in Science and the Is It Open Data? web service launched today.

From the Panton Principles preamble:

Science is based on building on, reusing and openly criticising the published body of scientific knowledge.

For science to effectively function, and for society to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavours, it is crucial that science data be made open.

By open data in science we mean that it is freely available on the public internet permitting any user to download, copy, analyse, re-process, pass them to software or use them for any other purpose without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. To this end data related to published science should be explicitly placed in the public domain.

The Panton Principles were authored by Peter Murray-Rust, Cameron Neylon, Rufus Pollock and John Wilbanks at the Panton Arms on Panton Street in Cambridge, UK – with input from the Working Group on Open Data in Science.

You can review and endorse the principles at http://www.pantonprinciples.org

The Is It Open Data? web service allows anyone to make and publicly record an enquiry into the openness of a scientific dataset.