scholarly journals Fostering global data sharing: highlighting the recommendations of the Research Data Alliance COVID-19 working group

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 267
Author(s):  
Claire C. Austin ◽  
Alexander Bernier ◽  
Louise Bezuidenhout ◽  
Juan Bicarregui ◽  
Timea Biro ◽  
...  

The systemic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic require cross-disciplinary collaboration in a global and timely fashion. Such collaboration needs open research practices and the sharing of research outputs, such as data and code, thereby facilitating research and research reproducibility and timely collaboration beyond borders. The Research Data Alliance COVID-19 Working Group recently published a set of recommendations and guidelines on data sharing and related best practices for COVID-19 research. These guidelines include recommendations for clinicians, researchers, policy- and decision-makers, funders, publishers, public health experts, disaster preparedness and response experts, infrastructure providers from the perspective of different domains (Clinical Medicine, Omics, Epidemiology, Social Sciences, Community Participation, Indigenous Peoples, Research Software, Legal and Ethical Considerations), and other potential users. These guidelines include recommendations for researchers, policymakers, funders, publishers and infrastructure providers from the perspective of different domains (Clinical Medicine, Omics, Epidemiology, Social Sciences, Community Participation, Indigenous Peoples, Research Software, Legal and Ethical Considerations). Several overarching themes have emerged from this document such as the need to balance the creation of data adherent to FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable), with the need for quick data release; the use of trustworthy research data repositories; the use of well-annotated data with meaningful metadata; and practices of documenting methods and software. The resulting document marks an unprecedented cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, and cross-jurisdictional effort authored by over 160 experts from around the globe. This letter summarises key points of the Recommendations and Guidelines, highlights the relevant findings, shines a spotlight on the process, and suggests how these developments can be leveraged by the wider scientific community.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 267
Author(s):  
Claire C. Austin ◽  
Alexander Bernier ◽  
Louise Bezuidenhout ◽  
Juan Bicarregui ◽  
Timea Biro ◽  
...  

The systemic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic require cross-disciplinary collaboration in a global and timely fashion. Such collaboration needs open research practices and the sharing of research outputs, such as data and code, thereby facilitating research and research reproducibility and timely collaboration beyond borders. The Research Data Alliance COVID-19 Working Group recently published a set of recommendations and guidelines on data sharing and related best practices for COVID-19 research. These guidelines include recommendations for researchers, policymakers, funders, publishers and infrastructure providers from the perspective of different domains (Clinical Medicine, Omics, Epidemiology, Social Sciences, Community Participation, Indigenous Peoples, Research Software, Legal and Ethical Considerations). Several overarching themes have emerged from this document such as the need to balance the creation of data adherent to FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable), with the need for quick data release; the use of trustworthy research data repositories; the use of well-annotated data with meaningful metadata; and practices of documenting methods and software. The resulting document marks an unprecedented cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, and cross-jurisdictional effort authored by over 160 experts from around the globe. This letter summarises key points of the Recommendations and Guidelines, highlights the relevant findings, shines a spotlight on the process, and suggests how these developments can be leveraged by the wider scientific community.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sünje Dallmeier-Tiessen ◽  
Varsha Khodiyar ◽  
Fiona Murphy ◽  
Amy Nurnberger ◽  
Lisa Raymond ◽  
...  

The data curation community has long encouraged researchers to document collected research data during active stages of the research workflow, to provide robust metadata earlier, and support research data publication and preservation. Data documentation with robust metadata is one of a number of steps in effective data publication. Data publication is the process of making digital research objects ‘FAIR’, i.e. findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable; attributes increasingly expected by research communities, funders and society. Research data publishing workflows are the means to that end. Currently, however, much published research data remains inconsistently and inadequately documented by researchers. Documentation of data closer in time to data collection would help mitigate the high cost that repositories associate with the ingest process. More effective data publication and sharing should in principle result from early interactions between researchers and their selected data repository. This paper describes a short study undertaken by members of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and World Data System (WDS) working group on Publishing Data Workflows. We present a collection of recent examples of data publication workflows that connect data repositories and publishing platforms with research activity ‘upstream’ of the ingest process. We re-articulate previous recommendations of the working group, to account for the varied upstream service components and platforms that support the flow of contextual and provenance information downstream. These workflows should be open and loosely coupled to support interoperability, including with preservation and publication environments. Our recommendations aim to stimulate further work on researchers’ views of data publishing and the extent to which available services and infrastructure facilitate the publication of FAIR data. We also aim to stimulate further dialogue about, and definition of, the roles and responsibilities of research data services and platform providers for the ‘FAIRness’ of research data publication workflows themselves.


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huda Khan ◽  
Brian Caruso ◽  
Jon Corson-Rikert ◽  
Dianne Dietrich ◽  
Brian Lowe ◽  
...  

In disciplines as varied as medicine, social sciences, and economics, data and their analyses are essential parts of researchers’ contributions to their respective fields. While sharing research data for review and analysis presents new opportunities for furthering research, capturing these data in digital forms and providing the digital infrastructure for sharing data and metadata pose several challenges. This paper reviews the motivations behind and design of the Data Staging Repository (DataStaR) platform that targets specific portions of the research data curation lifecycle: data and metadata capture and sharing prior to publication, and publication to permanent archival repositories. The goal of DataStaR is to support both the sharing and publishing of data while at the same time enabling metadata creation without imposing additional overheads for researchers and librarians. Furthermore, DataStaR is intended to provide cross-disciplinary support by being able to integrate different domain-specific metadata schemas according to researchers’ needs. DataStaR’s strategy of a usable interface coupled with metadata flexibility allows for a more scaleable solution for data sharing, publication, and metadata reuse.


2018 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin B. Read ◽  
Liz Amos ◽  
Lisa M. Federer ◽  
Ayaba Logan ◽  
T. Scott Plutchak ◽  
...  

Providing access to the data underlying research results in published literature allows others to reproduce those results or analyze the data in new ways. Health sciences librarians and information professionals have long been advocates of data sharing. It is time for us to practice what we preach and share the data associated with our published research. This editorial describes the activity of a working group charged with developing a research data sharing policy for the Journal of the Medical Library Association.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Spallek ◽  
S.M. Weinberg ◽  
M. Manz ◽  
S. Nanayakkara ◽  
X. Zhou ◽  
...  

Introduction: Increasing attention is being given to the roles of data management and data sharing in the advancement of research. This study was undertaken to explore opinions and past experiences of established dental researchers as related to data sharing and data management. Methods: Researchers were recruited from the International Association for Dental Research scientific groups to complete a survey consisting of Likert-type, multiple-choice, and open-ended questions. Results: All 42 respondents indicated that data sharing should be promoted and facilitated, but many indicated reservations or concerns about the proper use of data and the protection of research subjects. Many had used data from data repositories and received requests for data originating from their studies. Opinions varied regarding restrictions such as requirements to share data and the time limits of investigator rights to keep data. Respondents also varied in their methods of data management and storage, with younger respondents and those with higher direct costs of their research tending to use dedicated experts to manage their data. Discussion: The expressed respondent support for research data sharing, with the noted concerns, complements the idea of developing managed data clearinghouses capable of promoting, managing, and overseeing the data-sharing process. Knowledge Transfer Statement: Researchers can use the results of this study to evaluate and improve management and sharing of research data. By encouraging and facilitating the data-sharing process, research can advance more efficiently, and research findings can be implemented into practice more rapidly to improve patient care and the overall oral health of populations.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz ◽  
Varsha Khodiyar ◽  
Andrew L Hufton ◽  
Susanna-Assunta Sansone

AbstractSharing of experimental clinical research data usually happens between individuals or research groups rather than via public repositories, in part due to the need to protect research participant privacy. This approach to data sharing makes it difficult to connect journal articles with their underlying datasets and is often insufficient for ensuring access to data in the long term. Voluntary data sharing services such as the Yale Open Data Access (YODA) and Clinical Study Data Request (CSDR) projects have increased accessibility to clinical datasets for secondary uses while protecting patient privacy and the legitimacy of secondary analyses but these resources are generally disconnected from journal articles – where researchers typically search for reliable information to inform future research. New scholarly journal and article types dedicated to increasing accessibility of research data have emerged in recent years and, in general, journals are developing stronger links with data repositories. There is a need for increased collaboration between journals, data repositories, researchers, funders, and voluntary data sharing services to increase the visibility and reliability of clinical research. We propose changes to the format and peer-review process for journal articles to more robustly link them to data that are only available on request. We also propose additional features for data repositories to better accommodate non-public clinical datasets, including Data Use Agreements (DUAs).


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mareike Petersen ◽  
Bianca Pramann ◽  
Ralf Toepfer ◽  
Janna Neumann ◽  
Harry Enke ◽  
...  

This report describes the results of a workshop on research data management (RDM) that took place in June 2019. More than 50 experts from 46 different non-university institutes covering all Leibniz Sections participated. The aim of the workshop was the intra- and transdisciplinary exchange among RDM experts of different institutions and sections within the Leibniz Association on current questions and challenges but also on experiences and activities with respect to RDM. The event was structured in inspiring talks, a World Café to discuss ideas and solutions related to RDM and an exchange of experts following their affiliation to the different Leibniz sections. The workshop revealed that most institutions, independent of scientific fields, face similar overarching problems with respect to RDM, e.g. missing incentives and no awareness of the benefits that would arise from a proper RDM and data sharing. The event also endorsed that the Research Data Working Group of the Leibniz Association (AK Forschungsdaten) is a place for the exchange of all topics around RDM and enables discussions on how to refine RDM at all institutions and in all scientific fields.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz ◽  
James Harney ◽  
Lauren Cadwallader

PLOS has long supported Open Science. One of the ways in which we do so is via our stringent data availability policy established in 2014. Despite this policy, and more data sharing policies being introduced by other organizations, best practices for data sharing are adopted by a minority of researchers in their publications. Problems with effective research data sharing persist and these problems have been quantified by previous research as a lack of time, resources, incentives, and/or skills to share data. In this study we built on this research by investigating the importance of tasks associated with data sharing, and researchers’ satisfaction with their ability to complete these tasks. By investigating these factors we aimed to better understand opportunities for new or improved solutions for sharing data. In May-June 2020 we surveyed researchers from Europe and North America to rate tasks associated with data sharing on (i) their importance and (ii) their satisfaction with their ability to complete them. We received 728 completed and 667 partial responses. We calculated mean importance and satisfaction scores to highlight potential opportunities for new solutions to and compare different cohorts.Tasks relating to research impact, funder compliance, and credit had the highest importance scores. 52% of respondents reuse research data but the average satisfaction score for obtaining data for reuse was relatively low. Tasks associated with sharing data were rated somewhat important and respondents were reasonably well satisfied in their ability to accomplish them. Notably, this included tasks associated with best data sharing practice, such as use of data repositories. However, the most common method for sharing data was in fact via supplemental files with articles, which is not considered to be best practice.We presume that researchers are unlikely to seek new solutions to a problem or task that they are satisfied in their ability to accomplish, even if many do not attempt this task. This implies there are few opportunities for new solutions or tools to meet these researcher needs. Publishers can likely meet these needs for data sharing by working to seamlessly integrate existing solutions that reduce the effort or behaviour change involved in some tasks, and focusing on advocacy and education around the benefits of sharing data. There may however be opportunities - unmet researcher needs - in relation to better supporting data reuse, which could be met in part by strengthening data sharing policies of journals and publishers, and improving the discoverability of data associated with published articles.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Smith ◽  
Andrew Hufton

<p>Researchers are increasingly expected by funders and journals to make their data available for reuse as a condition of publication. At Springer Nature, we feel that publishers must support researchers in meeting these additional requirements, and must recognise the distinct opportunities data holds as a research output. Here, we outline some of the varied ways that Springer Nature supports research data sharing and report on key outcomes.</p><p>Our staff and journals are closely involved with community-led efforts, like the Enabling FAIR Data initiative and the COPDESS 2014 Statement of Commitment <sup>1-4</sup>. The Enabling FAIR Data initiative, which was endorsed in January 2019 by <em>Nature</em> and <em>Scientific Data</em>, and by <em>Nature Geoscience</em> in January 2020, establishes a clear expectation that Earth and environmental sciences data should be deposited in FAIR<sup>5</sup> Data-aligned community repositories, when available (and in general purpose repositories otherwise). In support of this endorsement, <em>Nature</em> and <em>Nature Geoscience</em> require authors to share and deposit their Earth and environmental science data, and <em>Scientific Data</em> has committed to progressively updating its list of recommended data repositories to help authors comply with this mandate.</p><p>In addition, we offer a range of research data services, with various levels of support available to researchers in terms of data curation, expert guidance on repositories and linking research data and publications.</p><p>We appreciate that researchers face potentially challenging requirements in terms of the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ of sharing research data. This can be particularly difficult for researchers to negotiate given that huge diversity of policies across different journals. We have therefore developed a series of standardised data policies, which have now been adopted by more than 1,600 Springer Nature journals. </p><p>We believe that these initiatives make important strides in challenging the current replication crisis and addressing the economic<sup>6</sup> and societal consequences of data unavailability. They also offer an opportunity to drive change in how academic credit is measured, through the recognition of a wider range of research outputs than articles and their citations alone. As signatories of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment<sup>7</sup>, Nature Research is committed to improving the methods of evaluating scholarly research. Research data in this context offers new mechanisms to measure the impact of all research outputs. To this end, Springer Nature supports the publication of peer-reviewed data papers through journals like <em>Scientific Data</em>. Analysis of citation patterns demonstrate that data papers can be well-cited, and offer a viable way for researchers to receive credit for data sharing through traditional citation metrics. Springer Nature is also working hard to improve support for direct data citation. In 2018 a data citation roadmap developed by the Publishers Early Adopters Expert Group was published in <em>Scientific Data</em><sup>8</sup>, outlining practical steps for publishers to work with data citations and associated benefits in transparency and credit for researchers. Using examples from this roadmap, its implementation and supporting services, we outline how a FAIR-led data approach from publishers can help researchers in the Earth and environmental sciences to capitalise on new expectations around data sharing.</p><p>__</p><ol><li>https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00075-3</li> <li>https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0506-4</li> <li>https://copdess.org/enabling-fair-data-project/commitment-statement-in-the-earth-space-and-environmental-sciences/</li> <li>https://copdess.org/statement-of-commitment/</li> <li>https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples</li> <li>https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d375368c-1a0a-11e9-8d04-01aa75ed71a1</li> <li>https://sfdora.org/read/</li> <li>https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.259</li> </ol>


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