Fork, merge and crowd-sourcing data curation: tools for collective data processing and analysis.

With the right formats, licensing and distribution mechanisms, people can easily collaborate over data, enhance the analysis and re-purpose for their own needs. Cameron Neylon reflects on the tools available for these aims. The interfaces that make working with the data easy may create barriers to automation and computational processing down the line. Further mechanisms are needed, both social and technical, to make it easy to contribute variations, enhancements and new ideas back to the original resources.