Ask not what your data can do for you? Really?

Should ‘data patriotism’ – the belief that curating and preserving data is good for the community and ‘the future’ be our primary motivation for good data practices? Does it have to be this way? Or should we be asking what our data (and curation) can do for us? Immediately, as we do research. We asked exactly that in the SEAD DataNet project and developed a set of online services you can use in your projects today that focuses on making it easier to do research, with data preservation as an added benefit. Spend 5 minutes and rethink your data plans.