Hosting

Hosting

The second big question for groups that want to open up their work is where to host their code and data. One option is for the lab, the department, or the university to provide a server, manage accounts and backups, and so on. The main benefit of this is that it clarifies who owns what, which is particularly important if any of the material is sensitive (i.e., relates to experiments involving human subjects or may be used in a patent application). The main drawbacks are the cost of providing the service and its longevity: a scientist who has spent ten years collecting data would like to be sure that data will still be available ten years from now, but that's well beyond the lifespan of most of the grants that fund academic infrastructure.

Another option is to purchase a domain and pay an Internet service provider (ISP) to host it. This gives the individual or group more control, and sidesteps problems that can arise when moving from one institution to another, but requires more time and effort to set up than either the option above or the option below.

The third option is to use a public hosting service like GitHub, BitBucket, Google Code, or SourceForge. All of these allow people to create repositories through a web interface, and also provide mailing lists, ways to keep track of who's doing what, and so on. They all benefit from economies of scale and network effects: it's easier to run one large service well than to run many smaller services to the same standard, and it's also easier for people to collaborate if they're using the same service, not least because it gives them fewer passwords to remember.

However, all of these services place some constraints on people's work. In particular, most give users a choice: if they're willing to share their work with others, it will be hosted for free, but if they want privacy, they may have to pay. Sharing might seem like the only valid choice for science, but many institutions may not allow researchers to do this, either because they want to protect future patent applications or simply because what's new is often also frightening.