In my first three-month update report report I discussed the book I’m working on as the major output of my Panton Fellowship. Entitled Introduction to Open Research Data, the book explores both the practical and theoretical issues associated with Open Data from a range of general and disciplinary viewpoints. The book will be Open Access, available in various ebook formats and low-cost print editions, and remixing will be encouraged – particularly the subject-specific guidance, which disciplinary communities can build upon as a foundation for a collection of resources on Open Data.

Whilst I am still awaiting a couple of contributions, I am happy to be able to share a provisional table of contents for the book. (Chapter topics on the left and authors on the right . Chapter titles still TBD):

1. Foreword: Introduction to the Panton Fellowships
2. Introduction to the book and the Panton Principles – Sam Moore (with input from the original Panton group)
3. Open Content Mining – Peter Murray-Rust and Jenny Molloy
4. Open Data and Neoliberalism – Eric Kansa
5. Data Sharing in a Humanitarian Organization: The Experience of Médecins Sans Frontières – Unni Karunakara (previous published in PLOS Medicine)
6. Open Data in Earth/Climate Sciences – Sarah Callaghan
7. Open Data in Psychology – Wouter van den Bos, Mirjam Jenny and Dirk Wulff
8. Digital Humanities and Linked Open Data  – Jodi Schneider
9. Open Data in Palaeontology – Ross Mounce
10. Open Data in the Health Sciences  – Tom Pollard
11. Open Data in Economics – Velichka Dimitrova
12. Why Open Drug Discovery Needs Four Simple Rules for Licensing Data and Models – Antony J. Williams, John Wilbanks and Sean Ekins (previously published in PLOS Computational Biology)

I won’t go into more detail about the content of each chapter, though authors were given free rein to approach the subject however they saw fit. Furthermore, I sought permission from the authors of the previously published pieces, though they were originally published under CC BY, and all were happy for their contributions to appear in the book.

I’m super excited for how this is coming together and I hope to have the book published by August. I will of course be posting updates along the way. Get in touch if you have any questions!