Panton Principles in Porto

I spent the day yesterday in Porto with the COST initiative on sharing HLA data (which exchanges data on human antigen typing, value for – say – pharmocogenomics or immunogenetics, including European migration). They'd invited three speakers – 2 on ethics and me on Open Data. It was a great meeting and as always it's great to see (17) European countries collaborating rather than bombing each other.

I took the opportunity to rehearse ideas of Open Data (as something orthogonal to ethics – e.g. human privacy) that apply to any science. And I stressed we should JUST concentrate on science – not a wider vision of knowledge or creative works.

When I give presentation like this I ask those present what their understanding of the background. There were about 25, and I asked how many present:

• had published an Open Access paper (3)

• had contributed to an Open Source program (1)

• had heard of Open Street Map (1)

• had used a Creative Commons licence (2)

I am not disappointed by these figures – the group clearly wanted to do the best thing. They wanted to develop interchange standards. They wanted to build open databases. They wanted to create data-only journals. They wanted to mashup population genetics on interactive maps.

I therefore gave a presentation which stressed simplicity. That's what scientists want. So I presented the Panton Principles (and I am DELIGHTED to see John Wilbanks giving the idea full support):

The idea now is to rework the simple statements such that they are trivially understanding the principles (like anyone can understand the Budapest Open Access declaration immediately). The following words should not occur anywhere:

• licence

• contract

• share-alike

• public domain (because no one know what it means)

Simply, the Principles should state that scientists wish to donate their data to the world community for any purpose and with no requirement other than attribution. That further use in a domain is regulated by the Community Norms in the domain (which will vary widely). That funders should mandate this. That anyone who offends against the spirit of this (as it is the spirit, not the letter) will have to answer the court of Community Opinion in their domain. That there will be a simple act of stating this intention in an electronic document, hopefully provided by software.

That's all. We have to craft some words but they should be simple enough to fit in a single paragraph. It won't be easy but John Rufus and others have been discussing this for many months. If you have an insight join the discussion.