Open access to high-level data and analysis tools in the CMS experiment at the LHC

Abstract

The CMS experiment, in recognition of its commitment to data preservation and open access as well as to education and outreach, has made its first public release of high-level data under the CC0 waiver: up to half of the proton-proton collision data (by volume) at 7 TeV from 2010 in CMS Analysis Object Data format. CMS has prepared, in collaboration with CERN and the other LHC experiments, an open-data web portal based on Invenio. The portal provides access to CMS public data as well as to analysis tools and documentation for the public. The tools include an event display and histogram application that run in the browser. In addition a virtual machine containing a CMS software environment along with XRootD access to the data is available. Within the virtual machine the public can analyse CMS data; example code is provided. We describe the accompanying tools and documentation and discuss the first experiences of data use.