Global Context

The 2008 NRC report on Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) highlighted the importance digital data will play in the future of materials science and engineering.\cite{national2008Integrated} MSE’s ever increasing reliance on computational modeling and simulation will demand digital data as the feedstock for solutions in both science and engineering.

In the US, the National Institutes of Health have long promoted a policy of open access to data generated from their grants.\cite{NIH-Statement} In the mid-1990’s the Human Genome Initiative spawned the Bermuda Principles which called for immediate public posting of sequences of the human genome.\cite{bermuda} More recently, the National Science Foundation has adopted a requirement that grantees provide a Data Management Plan in grant proposals.\cite{dissemination} Specific to the materials community, the sharing of digital data is a key strategy component of the US’s Materials Genome Initiative, and mechanisms to foster and enable sharing are actively under consideration.\cite{mgi-ostp}

The European Union has been very proactive in studying the impacts of a digitally-linked world on the scientific community. The EU Framework Programme 7 has funded a project called Opportunities for Data Exchange that has produced several relevant reports on publishing digital data in the scientific community.\cite{permanent-access} In June 2012 the Royal Society published “Science: An Open Enterprise” which promotes free and open access to scientific results, including data.\cite{sci-open} These studies are now broadly informing government policy. For example, recent policy in the UK in July 2012 calls for government funded research to be published in open access journals, and requires access to supporting research data.\cite{rcuk-open,rcuk-policy} In February 2013, Dr. John Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), issued a directive to all Federal agencies to develop plans to make the results of Federally-funded research more accessible to the public. A key component of this directive is a call for agency plans to include a means by which the digital data resulting from research can be made available to the public.\cite{ostp-memo} In support of this policy, the White House has established a useful web site providing resources supporting the establishment of open data.\cite{opendataproject} US Government funding agencies have provided their plans to address OSTP’s open research policy and results are imminent.

Other technical communities have addressed the challenges of access to digital data with a variety of approaches. Indeed, the biology community has implemented a number of differing approaches, for example, the approach taken in genetics versus that adopted by evolutionary biology.\cite{genbank,datadryad} In other disciplines, one subfield of thermodynamics has already adopted a very structured approach to archiving data, while the earth sciences community is embarked on an effort to define its approach.\cite{TRC,preparde} The astronomy community has dedicated international resources to the development of the Virtual Observatory, an infrastructure that enables global data discovery and access across hundreds of distributed archives.\cite{ivoa} Despite the differing mechanics of implementation, all the approaches were rooted in a community-led effort to define the path best suited for that particular technical field.

In response to these trends, technical communities and publishers have developed and implemented Open Access journals and data archiving policies. Again, the field of biology appears to be leading the way on both these fronts. Perhaps the best example of this trend is Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation, an Open Access journal dedicated to the discussion of digital data in biology.\cite{oxforddata} And in a recent development, Nature Publishing Group is launching a new open access journal, titled Scientific Data, which will be dedicated to publishing descriptions of scientific datasets and their acquisition.\cite{naturedata} It will initially focus on the life, biomedical and environmental science communities. The Public Library of Science recently strengthened its policy on data access: “PLOS journals require authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception.”¹

In order to begin a dialogue within the MSE community, NIST convened a workshop on digital materials data in May of 2012 under the auspices of MGI. The workshop identified a number of barriers that needed to be addressed during creation of a data strategy for materials, they include: Materials schema/ontology; Data and metadata standards; Data repositories/archive; Data quality; Incentives for data sharing; Intellectual property; and Tools for finding data.\cite{Warren_2012} Notable among these for this discussion are data repositories and incentives for data sharing. Other disciplines, notably evolutionary biology, have demonstrated peer-reviewed journals have the potential to contribute solutions to these barriers to data sharing. \cite{Whitlock_2010}