Open Access: Big data, big problems

Cern’s policies push openness—but the vast volumes of data its researchers generate is an obstacle

At Europe’s biggest nuclear research centre, even the smallest things can turn out to be of huge importance.

Earlier this summer, physicists at Cern unveiled their discovery of three “exotic” particles never seen before by scientists, whose existence had been revealed by smashing other particles together in the centre’s famous Large Hadron Collider.