Open Data and Palaeontology
Ross Mounce
Chapter from the book: Moore, S. 2014. Issues in Open Research Data.
Part of
Chapter from the book: Moore, S. 2014. Issues in Open Research Data.
First paragraph: Palaeontology is the study of ancient life in all its forms: vertebrates, arthropods, plants and many other weird and wonderful types of organism. As an academic discipline, it suffers from a perception in some quarters that it is a less quantitative, less analytical, ‘soft science’—a kind of Rutherfordian-view that the study of fossils is just ‘stamp collecting’. Yet modern palaeontology is often highly computational, generating lots of data with which to test and form hypotheses. In the digital age, once published, if provided in the right format, data can be easily reused by further studies to advance the sum of all human knowledge. This chapter examines the availability of palaeontology-related research data online and the reuse conditions under which it is made available.
Mounce, R. 2014. Open Data and Palaeontology. In: Moore, S (ed.), Issues in Open Research Data. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ban.j
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Published on Dec. 19, 2014