Open access to research data on forest ecosystems in Poland

Studies of forest ecosystems enable gathering important information on the natural environment the development of which is more and more disturbed by the global climate change. The current research on the ecosystem functioning provides data that may be of much value for future analysis and prognostic studies. Modern measurement techniques used in the forest research have a significant influence on the increase in the database resources, especially those concerning the spatial data. Big data requires the use of advanced analytical technologies, such as data warehouses, computer clusters or cloud computing. Consequently, cooperation of specialists from various scientific disciplines, including forestry, geography, climatology and computer science, has become increasingly necessary. The IT system of the Forest Research Institute (FRI) was modernized within the framework of the Operational Programme – Innovative Economy 2007–2013. Its functionality allows integrating, storing and analyzing ever more big databases from dispersed sources. The idea of open access to data is realized by the FRI mainly through publication of research results in domestic and foreign scientific journals, in specialized information services and on scientific portals. On the other hand, open access to raw data still raises a lot of concern and controversies in the scientific community, especially in the context of copyright infringement