scholarly journals Incentivising research data sharing: a scoping review

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 355
Author(s):  
Helen Buckley Woods ◽  
Stephen Pinfield

Background: Numerous mechanisms exist to incentivise researchers to share their data. This scoping review aims to identify and summarise evidence of the efficacy of different interventions to promote open data practices and provide an overview of current research. Methods: This scoping review is based on data identified from Web of Science and LISTA, limited from 2016 to 2021. A total of 1128 papers were screened, with 38 items being included. Items were selected if they focused on designing or evaluating an intervention or presenting an initiative to incentivise sharing. Items comprised a mixture of research papers, opinion pieces and descriptive articles. Results: Seven major themes in the literature were identified: publisher/journal data sharing policies, metrics, software solutions, research data sharing agreements in general, open science ‘badges’, funder mandates, and initiatives. Conclusions: A number of key messages for data sharing include: the need to build on existing cultures and practices, meeting people where they are and tailoring interventions to support them; the importance of publicising and explaining the policy/service widely; the need to have disciplinary data champions to model good practice and drive cultural change; the requirement to resource interventions properly; and the imperative to provide robust technical infrastructure and protocols, such as labelling of data sets, use of DOIs, data standards and use of data repositories.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federica Rosetta

Watch the VIDEO here.Within the Open Science discussions, the current call for “reproducibility” comes from the raising awareness that results as presented in research papers are not as easily reproducible as expected, or even contradicted those original results in some reproduction efforts. In this context, transparency and openness are seen as key components to facilitate good scientific practices, as well as scientific discovery. As a result, many funding agencies now require the deposit of research data sets, institutions improve the training on the application of statistical methods, and journals begin to mandate a high level of detail on the methods and materials used. How can researchers be supported and encouraged to provide that level of transparency? An important component is the underlying research data, which is currently often only partly available within the article. At Elsevier we have therefore been working on journal data guidelines which clearly explain to researchers when and how they are expected to make their research data available. Simultaneously, we have also developed the corresponding infrastructure to make it as easy as possible for researchers to share their data in a way that is appropriate in their field. To ensure researchers get credit for the work they do on managing and sharing data, all our journals support data citation in line with the FORCE11 data citation principles – a key step in the direction of ensuring that we address the lack of credits and incentives which emerged from the Open Data analysis (Open Data - the Researcher Perspective https://www.elsevier.com/about/open-science/research-data/open-data-report ) recently carried out by Elsevier together with CWTS. Finally, the presentation will also touch upon a number of initiatives to ensure the reproducibility of software, protocols and methods. With STAR methods, for instance, methods are submitted in a Structured, Transparent, Accessible Reporting format; this approach promotes rigor and robustness, and makes reporting easier for the author and replication easier for the reader.


Author(s):  
Liah Shonhe

The main focus of the study was to explore the practices of open data sharing in the agricultural sector, including establishing the research outputs concerning open data in agriculture. The study adopted a desktop research methodology based on literature review and bibliographic data from WoS database. Bibliometric indicators discussed include yearly productivity, most prolific authors, and enhanced countries. Study findings revealed that research activity in the field of agriculture and open access is very low. There were 36 OA articles and only 6 publications had an open data badge. Most researchers do not yet embrace the need to openly publish their data set despite the availability of numerous open data repositories. Unfortunately, most African countries are still lagging behind in management of agricultural open data. The study therefore recommends that researchers should publish their research data sets as OA. African countries need to put more efforts in establishing open data repositories and implementing the necessary policies to facilitate OA.


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).


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.


Publications ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana Raffaghelli ◽  
Stefania Manca

In the landscape of Open Science, Open Data (OD) plays a crucial role as data are one of the most basic components of research, despite their diverse formats across scientific disciplines. Opening up data is a recent concern for policy makers and researchers, as the basis for good Open Science practices. The common factor underlying these new practices—the relevance of promoting Open Data circulation and reuse—is mostly a social form of knowledge sharing and construction. However, while data sharing is being strongly promoted by policy making and is becoming a frequent practice in some disciplinary fields, Open Data sharing is much less developed in Social Sciences and in educational research. In this study, practices of OD publication and sharing in the field of Educational Technology are explored. The aim is to investigate Open Data sharing in a selection of Open Data repositories, as well as in the academic social network site ResearchGate. The 23 Open Datasets selected across five OD platforms were analysed in terms of (a) the metrics offered by the platforms and the affordances for social activity; (b) the type of OD published; (c) the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) data principles compliance; and (d) the extent of presence and related social activity on ResearchGate. The results show a very low social activity in the platforms and very few correspondences in ResearchGate that highlight a limited social life surrounding Open Datasets. Future research perspectives as well as limitations of the study are interpreted in the discussion.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Giovanna Badia

Objective – The research project examined university faculty’s publications in order to find professors with previous data experiences. The professors could then be approached with an offer of the library’s data services. Design – Bibliographic study. Setting – Department of Crop Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Subjects – A total of 62 assistant, associate, and full professors. Methods – The author searched Web of Science and faculty web pages to find each of the subjects’ two most recent research or review articles. Altogether, 124 articles were read to check whether data sources were used and shared. Data sources were defined as sources other than traditional citations to literature for information or ideas, such as data repositories, supplementary files, and weather stations. Data sharing was defined as publicly sharing data beyond that published in the journal article, such as providing supplementary files with the article or submitting data sets to a disciplinary repository (p. 205). Main Results – Thirty of the 124 articles, which were written by 20 different professors, referred to additional data that was made openly accessible. The analysis of the articles uncovered a variety of data experiences, such as faculty who utilized repository data, published supplementary files, submitted their own data to repositories, or posted data on their university’s website. These 20 faculty members were contacted and asked for a meeting “to discuss their data sharing thoughts and experiences and to ask whether they [saw] a role for the library in facilitating data sharing” (p. 206). The author received a positive response from seven of the faculty members and had a successful meeting with each of them. Conclusion – A bibliographic study can be employed to select which professors to target for data services. While this method is time-consuming, it allows librarians to gather rich data about faculty research that will help them to create customized, relevant messages to professors about the library’s data services. It also allows them to become more knowledgeable about data practices and resources in a particular discipline.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-156
Author(s):  
Deborah H. Charbonneau ◽  
Joan E. Beaudoin

This article reports the results of a study examining the state of data guidance provided to authors by 50 oncology journals. The purpose of the study was the identification of data practices addressed in the journals’ policies. While a number of studies have examined data sharing practices among researchers, little is known about how journals address data sharing. Thus, what was discovered through this study has practical implications for journal publishers, editors, and researchers. The findings indicate that journal publishers should provide more meaningful and comprehensive data guidance to prospective authors. More specifically, journal policies requiring data sharing, should direct researchers to relevant data repositories, and offer better metadata consultation to strengthen existing journal policies. By providing adequate guidance for authors, and helping investigators to meet data sharing mandates, scholarly journal publishers can play a vital role in advancing access to research data.


2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anajoyce Samuel Katabalwa ◽  
Jo Bates ◽  
Pamela Abbott

Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to examine the potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania identified in the existing research literature. Design/methodology/approach: The study involved a review of the literature on research data sharing practices. Findings: The findings indicate that, research data sharing have significant positive benefits among researchers such as increase high research impact; enhancing international community collaboration among researchers with same interests; improving scientific transparency and accuracy of data (Rappert and Bezuidenhout, 2016); increasing research output whereby a single dataset can be used to generate more than one article by different authors; and many more. The risks hampering data sharing practices includes researchers’ fears that data will be scooped, poached or misused (Onyancha, 2016); unreliable electric power; lack of fund to support research data sharing activities; absence of institutional governmental support for data management; perceived lack of evidence benefits (Leonelli, Rappert and Bezuidenhout, 2018); and others. However, in Tanzania research data sharing is relatively new, thus, no any governmental agency mandating or encouraging research data sharing; therefore, there is no research data management; no research open data repositories and no research data sharing policy at any agricultural institution in Tanzania. The study recommends that agricultural researchers should be sensitized to share their data, research data policy and data repositories should also be established to support data sharing practices in Tanzania. Originality and usefulness: From the available literature, this has been the first time that an effort has been made to examine the potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania. The study could be used by agricultural institutions and other institutions to assess the researchers’ needs in supporting research data sharing. Also, it can be used by the government and institutions to see the need of establishing open data repositories and open data policies to support research data sharing.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016555152199863
Author(s):  
Ismael Vázquez ◽  
María Novo-Lourés ◽  
Reyes Pavón ◽  
Rosalía Laza ◽  
José Ramón Méndez ◽  
...  

Current research has evolved in such a way scientists must not only adequately describe the algorithms they introduce and the results of their application, but also ensure the possibility of reproducing the results and comparing them with those obtained through other approximations. In this context, public data sets (sometimes shared through repositories) are one of the most important elements for the development of experimental protocols and test benches. This study has analysed a significant number of CS/ML ( Computer Science/ Machine Learning) research data repositories and data sets and detected some limitations that hamper their utility. Particularly, we identify and discuss the following demanding functionalities for repositories: (1) building customised data sets for specific research tasks, (2) facilitating the comparison of different techniques using dissimilar pre-processing methods, (3) ensuring the availability of software applications to reproduce the pre-processing steps without using the repository functionalities and (4) providing protection mechanisms for licencing issues and user rights. To show the introduced functionality, we created STRep (Spam Text Repository) web application which implements our recommendations adapted to the field of spam text repositories. In addition, we launched an instance of STRep in the URL https://rdata.4spam.group to facilitate understanding of this study.


2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Enwald

Open research data is data that is free to access, reuse, and redistribute. This study focuses on the perceptions, opinions and experiences of staff and researchers of research institutes on topics related to open research data. Furthermore, the differences across gender, role in the research organization and research field were investigated. An international questionnaire survey, translated into Finnish and Swedish, was used as the data collection instrument. An online survey was distributed through an open science related network to Finnish research organizations. In the end, 469 responded to all 24 questions of the survey. Findings indicate that many are still unaware or uncertain about issues related to data sharing and long-term data storage. Women as well as staff and researchers of medical and health sciences were most concerned about the possible problems associated with data sharing. Those in the beginning of their scientific careers, hesitated about sharing their data.


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