2011 Articles

White Paper for Expert Panel Discussion on Data Policies: A Workshop of the National Science Board, March 27-29, 2011

Stodden, Victoria C.

In our workshop charge we were invited to read three reports that formed the basis for the NSB“approved Data Policies Task Force's "Statement of Principles," providing the starting point for this workshop. I take a contrarian perspective and challenge the assumption in all these documents that open data is a foundational component of the scientific endeavor. Instead, I argue that the framing principle should be the reproducibility of computational results, from which open data (along with open code) falls as a natural corollary. In this note I highlight six implications of the framing of reproducible research as a guiding principle for science policy in the digital age.