Incentives for Data Sharing: £8.000 a year for promoting open data!

Posted: February 15th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Data Sharing | Tags: , | Comments Off on Incentives for Data Sharing: £8.000 a year for promoting open data!

When I first heard, that the Panton Fellowships offer the possibility to get £8.000 bucks in a year for making scientific data open, I thought this was a joke. Some kind of an idea that might only cause windfall gains by scientists needing a funding budget. But it is worth taking a deeper look:

The Panton Fellowships are funded by the Open Society Foundations. The coordination is done by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Fellowshops will be awarded to scientists who actively promote open data in science.

Fellowship holders are expected to carry out a variety of activities in the year they receive the funding.

  • Promoting the concept of open data in all areas of science.
  • Exploring practical solutions for making data open
  • Facilitate discussions surrounding the role and value of openness.
  • Catalyse the open community, and reach out beyond its traditional core

Sure, this model is not suitable for motivating science and research as a whole to change their habits, or what I call the “culture in scientific disciplines”. But nevertheless, it is a reasonable approach to support the idea of open data and to have professionals in their respective scientific fields to promote the idea of open data and the advantages of sharing and reusing data.

If you’re interested in applying for the fellowship, you have to hurry. Applicants should send a CV and covering letter by the 24th of February.  And – sorry for the bad news – applicants should have the relevant rights to work in the UK, and reasonably expect to be working and/or studying in the UK until March 2013.

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