The Future of Scientific Data

Generating research data has become pretty cheap in many cases, hence the amount of research data created grows at least exponentially in the last years. However, our (mental) tools to deal with this tremendously growing amount of data did not develop nearly in the same pace. Hence we are often drowned with data. Even worse: there is no easy way to determine nor ensure the quality of data. On the other hand, dealing with data is nothing new, but intrinsic to the scientific method since centuries. Starting with the question: What is this thing called science? and a short overview of the research data life cycle, two tools for specific aspects, namely the ASpecD framework for fully reproducible data analysis and the Infofile for recording sufficiently complete metadata during data acquisition are presented. Eventually, the answer to the question raised in the talk is: It’s the way you are dealing with (our) data. For our future self – and science itself.