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It’s time for agricultural researchers to take better advantage of the massive amount of data they produce and move into an era of “big science.” Open data—data that are publicly available and have been intentionally prepared for reuse and innovation by others—is the path to the research breakthroughs of the future. But to make that move, agricultural science must change in significant ways. That’s what our seven-person task force concluded in a report published March 11 for the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology.
Small science—researchers working alone or in little groups, analyzing, interpreting, and sharing only their most important result(s)—is no longer adequate to improve world food production, nutrition enhancement, food safety, and disease prevention, all while protecting the environment. Teams from different disciplines, working with robust data sets and widely available and shared information are what’s required today to make substantive progress on complex ...
