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Announcing The Open Dinosaur Project



Mike Taylor, Matt Wedel, and I are pleased to announce the public
launch of The Open Dinosaur Project (http://opendino.wordpress.com/),
or ODP for short.

The ODP was founded to involve professional paleontologists and the
public alike in developing a comprehensive database of dinosaur limb
bone measurements, with the goal of investigating questions of
dinosaur function and evolution. We have three major goals:1) do good
science; 2) do this science in the most open way possible; and 3)
allow anyone who is interested to participate. And by anyone, we mean
anyone! We do not care about your education, geographic location, age,
or previous background with paleontology. The only requirement for
joining the ODP is that you share in the project's goals and are
willing to help out in the efforts.

So how can you participate? Right now, the main task is data entry. We
are focusing on collecting measurements of ornithischian dinosaurs -
and with all of the open access journal archives (e.g., AMNH
Novitates) and PDFs floating around, there are *plenty* of data to go
around! Those of you who have original measurements are also welcome
to contribute those. All contributors are offered authorship on the
resulting paper, which will be submitted to an open access journal.
All data collected during the course of the project will be freely
available.

Consider this your invitation to join the ODP! If you've never done
"real science" before, this is your chance. Learn more about the
project at our blog: http://opendino.wordpress.com/

Andy