Journal
ZOOKEYS
Volume -, Issue 150, Pages 15-51Publisher
PENSOFT PUBLISHERS
DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.150.1766
Keywords
life science; informatics; data issues; standards; incentives; escience
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Funding
- NSF The Data Conservancy (A digital research and curation virtual organization) [0830976]
- Div Of Biological Infrastructure [1342595, 1062387] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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We review technical and sociological issues facing the Life Sciences as they transform into more data-centric disciplines - the Big New Biology. Three major challenges are: 1) lack of comprehensive standards; 2) lack of incentives for individual scientists to share data; 3) lack of appropriate infrastructure and support. Technological advances with standards, bandwidth, distributed computing, exemplar successes, and a strong presence in the emerging world of Linked Open Data are sufficient to conclude that technical issues will be overcome in the foreseeable future. While motivated to have a shared open infrastructure and data pool, and pressured by funding agencies in move in this direction, the sociological issues determine progress. Major sociological issues include our lack of understanding of the heterogeneous data cultures within Life Sciences, and the impediments to progress include a lack of incentives to build appropriate infrastructures into projects and institutions or to encourage scientists to make data openly available.
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