Summary
A short piece for UNESCO on open data in science. Why sharing datasets openly accelerates discovery, and what it takes to make large biological datasets genuinely usable by researchers who did not generate them.
Dr Panda argues from direct experience. His group's whole genome time series studies span more than sixty tissues, brain regions and the gut microbiome across species, ages and sexes. Datasets of that shape are expensive to produce and almost impossible to exhaust, so their value multiplies when others can query them. Those studies have already drawn a wave of researchers worldwide into following up on specific findings, which is the argument for openness made concretely rather than in principle. His published work involves hundreds of collaborators and coauthors, a scale of collaboration that only functions with shared data.
Short, and useful as a statement of position for anyone thinking about data policy in the life sciences.
