LHC data to be made public via open access initiative

CMS is taking its first steps in making up to half of its data accessible to the public

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CMS is taking its first steps in making up to half of its data accessible to the public, in accordance with its policy for data preservation, re-use and open access. The first release will be made available in the second half of 2014, and will comprise of a portion of the data collected in 2010.

Although in principle providing open scientific data will allow potentially anyone to sift through them and perform analyses of their own, in practice doing so is very difficult: it takes CMS scientists working in groups and relying upon each others' expertise many months or even years to perform a single analysis that must then be scrutinised by the whole collaboration before a scientific paper can be published. A first-time analysis typically takes about a year from start of preparation to publication, not taking into account the six months it takes newcomers to learn the analysis software.

CMS therefore decided to study a concrete use-case for its open data by launching a pilot project aimed at education. This project, partially funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, will share CMS data with Finnish high schools and integrate them into their physics curriculum. These data will be part of a general platform for open data provided by Finland’s IT Center for Science (the CSC).

Read more: "LHC data to be made public via open access initiative" – CMS