1. Open Data and Pulsar Timing Andrea N. Lommen Chair, International Pulsar Timing Array Committee Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Head of Astronomy Program Director of Grundy Observatory Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster, PA

2. My points Openly releasing your data maximizes the scientific potential of the whole experiment. For years we have been committed to releasing our data systematically, and have only managed to do it in non-systematic ways. Do not underestimate the personnel and person-hours that it will require.

3. Openly releasing your data maximizes the scientific potential of the whole experiment. “All the reasons for not releasing the data are psychological. All the reasons for releasing the data are scientific.” - Xavi Siemens

4. For years we have been committed to releasing our data systematically, and have only managed to do it in non-systematic ways. Public Data policy at all telescopes (12-24 months proprietary period) NRAO and Parkes Databases are a couple years old. 2 year-old IPTA data sharing agreement. Widespread agreement through all collaborations that we should make our data public.

5. The Result of All these years of being committed to open data Some tarballs have been exchanged. One dataset has been made public, and 2 more are about to be made public, most likely via publicly available tarball. Some databases have been started but after several years, none are ready to be seen by more than a few people.

6. What we conclude from this It’s really hard to create a good database. It’s even harder when you are dealing with people who like to continuously monkey with their data and (to be fair) whose data is continuously updated. It’s doubly harder when you are dealing with people who don’t really want to be bothered with the database because it distracts them from their “real science.” If you want this to succeed, – make everyone think about this beforehand (ie have a conference like this one where the probably importers and exporters gather together) – Get the database programmers involved(you might need another conference) – Do that all again at some midway step where everyone can tweak it. – Do not underestimate the number of personnel required to pull this off.

7. As part of the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA) project, we the undersigned PTA collaborations do hereby agree to share pulsar data obtained as part of the respective projects with the following terms and conditions: The data is made available to the PTAs for doing PTA work only. This could be GW work, ephemerides or new time standards, but it is not for studying the properties of individual sources. Nothing is to be published from these data by people who didn't take the data without the participation of people from the group that did take the data, in both the analysis process and in any resulting publications. IPTA-wide projects led by graduate students will be protected from prior publication by others. Such projects must be agreed to by the IPTA collaboration and the protection will be reviewed annually by the collaboration. We share calibrated pulse profile data, timing template profiles and ToAs, but raw data files will be made available on request. Shared data (including a summary table), lists of members of each PTA collaboration and lists of agreed collaborative projects will be made available on a server accessible only to members of the IPTA collaboration. Data will be made available within six months of the date of observation. Within a year of the date of this agreement and under the terms of this agreement, we commit to making available data obtained as part of the PTA projects. Access to earlier data will be by negotiation with the relevant group. The status and terms of this agreement will be reviewed annually. (Signed by NANOGrav, the PPTA and the EPTA on June 3, 2009)