NeSI is the inaugural Open Science Award Sponsor

Syndicated from the New Zealand Open Source Awards website:

For the first time, the 2012 New Zealand Open Source Awards will include a category recognizing the importance of science to the wider community. The Open Science Award will be awarded to the outstanding use of free and open source software to make scientific research and data accessible to all.

This new category highlights that open licensing for research, software and data fosters cooperation and creates real value in the research sector. The New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) anticipates this award will highlight leadership by New Zealand researchers applying open licensing and open approaches in their research.

"NeSI is delighted to be part of the awards," says Nick Jones, Director of NeSI.

"We work everyday with researchers who are creating and applying openly licensed software and data to their research, and know first hand the impact it can have as we use, contribute to and create open source software ourselves."

New Zealanders are invited to nominate scientists who participate in open science for the award, including those who apply open licensing to their software, data, and publications or who have applied openly licensed software, data, and publications to achieve significant research results.

Open source software is often a strong enabler of science. There are global leaders originating from New Zealand, such as the well known R programming language. R began its life at The University of Auckland, received special recognition at last year's awards and is used by hundreds of thousands of researchers worldwide.

Nominations for the general awards close at midnight on October 4, 2012. Nominations for the People's Choice Award will then run from October 12 until midnight October 26.

The Awards ceremony will be held on November 7, 2012.