(Subtitle) New Incentive to give Open Access to a Valuable Resource for ScienceA growing number of researchers, making use of technical capabilities and infrastructures with exponentially growing data output rates, produce a correspondingly growing avalanche of datasets and derived information. It is a challenge central to the advancement of science that this avalanche is not underutilised at present and not lost for future generations. However, in many disciplines of the Earth Sciences, researchers are reluctant to allow use or re-use of data they collected. There are many plausible reasons for this attitude. The most forceful argument encountered appears to be that others could profit from the arduous work done, without giving back due credit to the creator of data. The technical availability of means to refer to the data, and their creator, even by persistent digital identifiers, does not eliminate the concern that this would simply not be done. This, of course, is due to the non-existence of universally accepted standards for the publication and citation of data, which would be regarded as part of good scientific practise. The lack of this standard also leads to the question of the evaluation of individuals and organisations: Publication of data, however valuable, in most cases does not lead to recognition in evaluations and rankings. A solution to this situation will be provided by founding a new, Open Access journal for peer reviewed publication of data from Earth Science disciplines. Given any adherence to rules of good scientific conduct, it should not be too difficult to achieve a significant impact factor and thus a better formal basis for recognition. It is to be expected that this recognition will lead to a much improved - and open - access to data. Structure and rules of this data publishing journal will be outlined.