I described in an earlier post that data sharing in Neuroscience is relatively non-existent. Some commentary on the subject has appeared since then via the 2007 SfN Satellite Symposium on Data Sharing entitled Value Added by Data SharingLong-TermPotentiation of Neuroscience Research, published in Neuroinformatics. I was also excited to see an article published last week Data Sharing for Computational Neuroscienc, also in Neuroinformatics. However, there is a caveat or two. Apart from ignoring all the data representation issues presented in other domains such as bioinformatics, the re-use of data models such as FuGE, or contribution to ontology efforts such as OBI, all these articles are not open access! How ironic, or should that be how embarrassing. Phil also covers this issue in his blog.
Oh well, looks as if there is still a challenge in the domain of Neuroscience for access to valuable insights into information flow in the brain. Who want to know how the brain works anyway? You can always pay $32 to springer if you want to find out.
fgibson.com 
#1 by Jean-Claude Bradley on February 18, 2008 - 7:00 pm
It is strange to see this type of irony – open data discussion in closed journals. One of my colleagues has tried to make the point that we have to do this in order to reach the mainstream. I’m not sure I totally agree with that but that perception is out there.
#2 by peanutbutter on February 22, 2008 - 3:00 pm
I think I am with you on this Jean-Claude, we don’t have to do this to reach the mainstream, especially on topics such as datasharing