Editorial opinion: public dissemination of raw turbulence data

Many of the papers in this issue deal with processing of pre-existing large-scale turbulence data. We argue here that there is a certain urgency to the discussion of whether raw data should be made publicly available within the turbulence community, and of which are the best procedures, technology and rules for possible dissemination. Besides expressing the personal opinion that such sharing would be advantageous for the field, the urgency mostly arises from the danger that funding agencies and other institutions would otherwise set standards without proper community input. The experience of the Madrid School of Aeronautics with the dissemination of numerical simulation results is briefly reviewed, including the present technological solutions and usage statistics.