Galileo's repository

Just had a mad conversation with a friend about this project. What if Galileo had actually "owned" his discovery that the earth orbited the sun and not the other way round, along with the vast amount of scientific data he accumulated during his lifetime. Or if, throughout history, scientists had been able to draw upon and use each others data? In Galileo's case, the poor guy spent the last years of his life under house arrest. What would the implications be if someone else came up with something considered "hare-brained" or even wicked or evil in this day and age? Would anyone WANT to own that data? and if it did become valuable in the future, how would this data be protected. This is just a bit of a brainstorm and a rant I do'n't want to lose this train of thought... :)

Introduction and Notes

This is the beginning of my INFO 580 project for completion of my MLIS.

I am very interested in exploring the possibility of New Zealand researchers data curation practices.

ROUGH NOTES:
Although there are many repositories established within academic institutions, I am intrigued by the amount of data researchers must have to manage as well as the possibilities which might exist, not only for data curation, but how researchers might share or collaborate on these.

"New Zealand researchers' data curation practices

Institutional repositories have become popular in the tertiary sector as a way of making academic research more widely available, and also preserving it for the future. There is growing interest in making research data available in a similar fashion, but we currently know little about how New Zealand researchers manage their data, and what data curation services may be needed." - SUPERVISOR

Questions:

Do researchers want to make academic research data more widely available? how do they want to preserve data? Issues involved?
How will this be done? Methods of data curation?
What would be the implications for collaboration?
Use of academic research data by students? Implications?