SPARC Open Data Email Discussion List

The SPARC Open Data Email Discussion List will provide a forum for participants to explore issues of access to digital data associated with peer-reviewed STM research.

Many advocates of Open Data believe that, although there are substantial potential benefits from sharing and reusing digital data upon which scientific advances are built, today much of it is being lost or underutilized because of legal, technological and other barriers. Beginning in October 2005, the new discussion list will enable participants to debate issues of access to and re-use of research data that researchers or funders wish to see available for use by others.

The list's emphasis is on defining the scope of Open Data and collecting examples of desirable and undesirable practices.

To subscribe, send a message to: SPARC-OpenData-on@arl.org.

There are three ways to subscribe:

1. FEED Mode
   After a message is posted, it is distributed to all users subscribed in the FEED mode. The message appears on the web site at the same time. To subscribe to the FEED mode, send any message to SPARC-OpenData-feed@arl.org.

2. DIGEST Mode
   A digest message contains a set of the messages posted to the forum since the time the previous digest was composed. To subscribe to the DIGEST mode, send any message to SPARC-OpenData-digest@arl.org.

3. INDEX Mode
   A list index message contains the same digest header, TOC, and TOC trailer, but it does not contain the posted messages themselves and it does not contain the digest trailer. List index messages are created at the same time the list digest messages are created. For the SOA Forum, this is every 24 hours at 5:00am EST. To subscribe to the INDEX mode, send any message to SPARC-OpenData-index@arl.org.

To unsubscribe:

Send any message to SPARC-OpenData-off@arl.org.

To post messages:

Send your message to SPARC-OpenData@arl.org. (For subscribers only.)

To read or search past postings:

Visit the Discussion List Archive.