There is a growing awareness that facilitating access to data encourages collaborative science and knowledge advancement. How far are we willing to go in this direction and what are some of the implications? How does this affect intellectual property, authority of source and peer review? Kim Hill discusses these questions with Julian Carver, founder of Seradigm and spokesperson for Open New Zealand; Ed Corkery, Chief Executive, Koordinates, facilitating online access to geospatial datasets; Peter Griffin, manager, Science Media Centre and technology commentator for Radio New Zealand and New Zealand Listener.