The scientific data sharing mechanism and public understanding of science

Danna shen, Zhiqiang Hu

Humanity department of graduate university of Chinese academy of science, Beijing, China

It has been a common sense that scientific data sharing mechanism should be established in a country. Many countries’ governments are planning or taking this work into practice. However, scientific data is limited to a small group who do science research or professional work in some certain fields, but the sharing right of common people is neglected completely. This improper attitude has affected the policy making and practicing of the mechanism.

The paper puts forward firstly that the public should be the first group benefiting from the scientific data. As far as the essence of scientific data is concerned, it belongs to the public, except those high secret or competitive science information. The government, the science colony and research groups who have the scientific data are responsible to provide and analyze the data to the public, while as the taxpayer the public has the right to know the basic data as much as possible. Moreover, at present, in order to promote their development, public are eager to know science concerned information from the extension of science and technology in countryside, the information about health and disease, to the development strategy of a company. Only in this way, the value of the science information can be realized. Therefore, when we set up the scientific data sharing mechanism we should consider the public sharing of science information, including how to obtain these data, the limit of obtainment and the approach of obtainment.

Secondly, the paper demonstrates some peculiar difficulties in public sharing of scientific data by taking the on doing scientific data sharing project in China. By analyzing Chinese existing info-resource on the internet, and following the aim of scientific data sharing project, we analyzed deficiencies of the data shared to the public and found out the corresponding reason. There are some problems in, for example, government investment to non-profit science information; difficulties in sharing science information which was caused by dispersed departments; legal assistance to non-profit scientific data provided by the government; the public's understanding level to scientific data: in ways people get the data; the limit of people's obtainment to non-profit scientific data; the public's abilities to obtain the data.

Finally, the paper tries to put forward some solutions on these difficulties as suggestions for the on doing scientific data sharing project. The suggestion includes the analysis of China’s policy making and guarantying on public sharing scientific data through introduction of opening up scientific data sharing mechanism in USA; the way to benefit all sides concerned with the mechanism; the way to set up a sharing mechanism held by government, department and the individuals; the management to the limit of scientific data by classification.

Key words: scientific data, public, sharing mechanism, China