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Abstract

Modern means of acquiring, storing, manipulating and instantaneously communicating large and complex data volumes pose both great challenges and great opportunities for science. The challenge is to maintain scientific self-correction, which depends on concurrent publication of concepts and the underlying evidence. The opportunity is to exploit massive and complex data volumes in creating new knowledge. Both are non-trivial tasks. The former requires "intelligent openness". The latter requires new ways of thinking and new forms of collaboration, which make major demands on scientists, their institutions, those that fund science and those who publish it. Effective responses to the challenges and opportunities are fundamental to scientific progress.

Scientific discoveries have changed, are changing and will continue to change human lives and the societies of which we are part. Ensuring that science is also a public enterprise, rather than being conducted behind closed laboratory doors, is fundamental to democracy, and for this science needs to be open: open in its priorities and the way it is done, intelligently open about the evidence (the data) underlying scientific concepts, and open and accessible in its published outputs. Such a perspective should be a high priority for all.