Open Data and Culture Change
at CERN
Achintya Rao
(@RaoOfPhysics)

The CERN Open Data Portal
http://opendata.cern.ch
Screenshot: CERN Open Data Portal. Reproduced for information only.

Open development
GitHub repo: https://github.com/cernopendata/opendata.cern.ch
Public chat: https://gitter.im/cernopendata/opendata.cern.ch
Screenshot: GitHub. Reproduced for information only.

Screenshots: CERN Open Data Portal and CMS website. Reproduced for information only.

Changing attitudes…
• Less opposition to making
data available openly…
– Fears about “outsiders”
abusing data not realised
– No resources/energies
expended on disproving
“discoveries”
• Improved outlook from
positive experiences…
– Use in high-school education
– Use at university-level
training
– Use in broader particle-
physics community
– Use outside the community
feeding back into particle
physics
Slide licence: CC BY

Project CODER
Teaching programming and particle physics in high schools
Screenshot: Project CODER. Reproduced for information only.

Validation of CMS data
Undergraduate students reproduce CMS plots using open data and a bit
of guidance
Slide: Courtesy of Achim Geiser. Reproduced for information only.

Novel research
Theorists from MIT performing analyses using CMS open data, fostering
collaboration between the theorists and experimentalists
Slide: Courtesy of Jesse Thaler. Reproduced for information only.

Lessons learnt
• Show there are no (or few?) downsides of making data
available openly
• Demonstrate positive impact from use of open data
• Provide support and/or nag people
– Once infrastructure and workflow are up, future additions are
comparatively easy
• Conduct discussions openly (well, as openly as possible)
Slide licence: CC BY