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Issues in Open Research Data, p. 151-164

DOI: 10.5334/ban.j

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Open Data and Palaeontology

Book chapter published in 2014 by Ross Mounce ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Preprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Published version: policy unknown

Abstract

Palaeontology is the study of ancient life in all its forms: vertebrates, arthropods, plants and many other weird and wonderful types of organism. As an academic discipline, it suffers from a perception in some quarters that it is a less quantitative, less analytical, 'soft science'—a kind of Rutherfordian-view that the study of fossils is just 'stamp collecting'. Yet modern palaeontology is often highly computational, generating lots of data with which to test and form hypotheses. In the digital age, once published, if provided in the right format, data can be easily reused by further studies to advance the sum of all human knowledge. This chapter examines the availability of palaeontology-related research data online and the reuse conditions under which it is made available.