Dr. Nico Sommerdijk from the Laboratory for Materials and Interface Chemistry (Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry) has meanwhile set the right example by placing a dozen gigabytes of measurement data in the data center: the underlying data for the article which his group published in Science last year. They are data in three different processing stages, supplemented by a film. The relevant data set was so big that Science was unable to place it with the article on-line. Via the data center the measurement data are now available for interested colleagues nonetheless.

Sommerdijk enthusiastically supports the concept of a public data archive. “This is what science should be like: everybody can look into my kitchen. This will enhance the reliability of the research.” Often measurement data contain relevant information that the researchers themselves have not retrieved yet. Here Sommerdijk sees opportunities in particular for scientists from less well-off countries. “For the further analysis of the available measurement data you only need your head and a computer. If you have no funds for costly experiments, you can still contribute to science via this route.”

The data center can also be used for educational purposes and agreements have been made with the research group led by prof. dr. ir. Wil van der Aalst (W&I) for the storage of the data they generate by means of ‘process mining’.

On behalf of the IEC, policy official drs. Leon Osinski and repository manager dr.ir. Sjoerd Miesen are involved in the 3TU project which is being coordinated from Delft, for which a total budget of two million euro is available. Miesen emphasizes that it concerns a ‘trusted data center’, containing only the data that have served as the basis for a publication. In his opinion, there is an important function to be fulfilled by such public archives. “Just imagine that all underlying data of the contested climate reports would be made public in an archive of this kind. This would make it possible for everybody to inspect the basis for the conclusions.”

The intention is for the data sets to be accompanied in the future by a unique digital label, so that a link to them may already be provided on the website of the scientific journal. (TJ)/.

Researchers who wish to know more about the possibilities can contact Sjoerd Miesen or Leon Osinski. See also http://datacentrum.3tu.nl