There have been several discussions among my data librarian colleagues about the future of open data and science in 2017, spurned on by articles such as this one on the future of data sharing and these articles on the continued existence of government-held climate data.
These concerns are realistic. We’ve seen from our neighbors in Canada that politics can have a profound impact on the sharing of science. In turn, librarians have a role to play to advocate for continued access to information (shout out to the amazing John Dupuis for that last link).
Relevant to my work here, the two things I’m most concerned about are:
- Continued existence of requirements for funding agency data sharing.
- Muzzling of researchers, particularly climate scientists.
I’ll going to try to keep up with what is going on in these two areas and will occasionally share my thoughts back here. In the meantime, I’ve started a #TrumpSci bookmarks list that you can follow along with here: list and RSS feed.
Please send me relevant stories as you find them!
Edited to add (2016-12-15): The wonderful John Dupuis preempted me with a Trump list. I’m still going to work on my list and talk about this topic on the blog but in the meantime you should definitely check out his more thorough round up.
