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The number of chemical compounds and associated experimental data in public databases is growing, but presently there is no simple way to access these data in a quick and synoptic manner. Instead, data are fragmented across different resources and interested parties need to invest invaluable time and effort to navigate these systems.
The past two decades have seen a revolution in digital imaging techniques for capturing gross morphology, offering an unprecedented volume of data for biological research. Despite the rapid increase in scientific publications incorporating those images, the underlying datasets remain largely inaccessible. As the technical barriers to data sharing continue to fall, we face a more intimate, and perhaps more complicated, obstacle to open data – the one in our minds.
