Networking for Open Science Proposal

Cameron Neylon is looking for interest in his idea to fund networking for Open Science:

The UK Engineering and
Physical Sciences Research Council currently has a call out for proposals to fund ‘Network Activities’ in e-science. This seems like an opportunity to both publicise and support the ‘Open Science’ agenda so I am proposing to write a proposal to ask for ~£150-200k to fund workshops, meetings, and visits between different people and groups. The money could fund people to come to meetings (including from outside the UK and Europe) but could not be used to directly support research activities. The rationale for the proposal would be as follows.

‘Open Science’ has the potential to radically increase the efficiency and effectiveness of research world wide.

The community is disparate and dispersed with many groups working on different approaches that do not currently interoperate - agreeing some interchange or tagging standards may enable significant progress

Many of those driving the agenda are early career scientists including graduate students and postdocs who do not have independent travel funds and whose PI may not have resources to support attending meetings where this agenda is being developed

There is significant interest from academics, some publishers, software and tool developers, and research funders in making more data freely available but limited concensus on how to take this forward and thus far an insufficient committment of resources to make this possible in practice