scholarly journals A survey of researchers' needs and priorities for data sharing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz ◽  
James Harney ◽  
Lauren Cadwallader
Keyword(s):  
Data Sharing ◽  
Research Impact ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Share Data ◽  
Do So

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.

scholarly journals Perceptions and Attitudes toward Data Sharing among Dental Researchers

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Spallek ◽  
S.M. Weinberg ◽  
M. Manz ◽  
S. Nanayakkara ◽  
X. Zhou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Management ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
International Association ◽  
Improve Patient Care ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Share Data ◽  
Past Experiences

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.

scholarly journals Abordagens de reúso e a questão da reusabilidade dos dados científicos | Approaches for data reuse and the issue of scientific data reusability

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Curty
Keyword(s):  
Data Sharing ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
Documentation Quality ◽  
Data Documentation

RESUMO As diretivas governamentais e institucionais em torno do compartilhamento de dados de pesquisas financiadas com dinheiro público têm impulsionado a rápida expansão de repositórios digitais de dados afim de disponibilizar esses ativos científicos para reutilização, com propósitos nem sempre antecipados, pelos pesquisadores que os produziram/coletaram. De modo contraditório, embora o argumento em torno do compartilhamento de dados seja fortemente sustentado no potencial de reúso e em suas consequentes contribuições para o avanço científico, esse tema permanece acessório às discussões em torno da ciência de dados e da ciência aberta. O presente artigo de revisão narrativa tem por objetivo lançar um olhar mais atento ao reúso de dados e explorar mais diretamente esse conceito, ao passo que propõe uma classificação inicial de cinco abordagens distintas para o reúso de dados de pesquisa (reaproveitamento, agregação, integração, metanálise e reanálise), com base em situações hipotéticas acompanhadas de casos de reúso de dados publicados na literatura científica. Também explora questões determinantes para a condição de reúso, relacionando a reusabilidade à qualidade da documentação que acompanha os dados. Oferece discussão sobre os desafios da documentação de dados, bem como algumas iniciativas e recomendações para que essas dificuldades sejam contornadas. Espera-se que os argumentos apresentados contribuam não somente para o avanço conceitual em torno do reúso e da reusabilidade de dados, mas também reverberem em ações relacionadas à documentação dos dados de modo a incrementar o potencial de reúso desses ativos científicos.Palavras-chave: Reúso de Dados; Reprodutibilidade Científica; Reusabilidade; Ciência Aberta; Dados de Pesquisa. ABSTRACT The availability of scientific assets through data repositories has been greatly increased as a result of government and institutional data sharing policies and mandates for publicly funded research, allowing data to be reused for purposes not always anticipated by primary researchers. Despite the fact that the argument favoring data sharing is strongly grounded in the possibilities of data reuse and its contributions to scientific advancement, this subject remains unobserved in discussions about data science and open science. This paper follows a narrative review method to take a closer look at data reuse in order to better conceptualize this term, while proposing an early classification of five distinct data reuse approaches (repurposing, aggregation, integration, meta-analysis and reanalysis) based on hypothetical cases and literature examples. It also explores the determinants of what constitutes reusable data, and the relationship between data reusability and documentation quality. It presents some challenges associated with data documentation and points out some initiatives and recommendations to overcome such problems. It expects to contribute not only for the conceptual advancement around the reusability and effective reuse of the data, but also to result in initiatives related to data documentation in order to increase the reuse potential of these scientific assets.Keywords:Data Reuse; Scientific Reproducibility; Reusability; Open Science; Research Data.  

scholarly journals Data sharing practices and data availability upon request differ across scientific disciplines

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leho Tedersoo ◽  
Rainer Küngas ◽  
Ester Oras ◽  
Kajar Köster ◽  
Helen Eenmaa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Sharing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Funding Agencies ◽  
Share Data ◽  
Bonus Points

AbstractData sharing is one of the cornerstones of modern science that enables large-scale analyses and reproducibility. We evaluated data availability in research articles across nine disciplines in Nature and Science magazines and recorded corresponding authors’ concerns, requests and reasons for declining data sharing. Although data sharing has improved in the last decade and particularly in recent years, data availability and willingness to share data still differ greatly among disciplines. We observed that statements of data availability upon (reasonable) request are inefficient and should not be allowed by journals. To improve data sharing at the time of manuscript acceptance, researchers should be better motivated to release their data with real benefits such as recognition, or bonus points in grant and job applications. We recommend that data management costs should be covered by funding agencies; publicly available research data ought to be included in the evaluation of applications; and surveillance of data sharing should be enforced by both academic publishers and funders. These cross-discipline survey data are available from the plutoF repository.

scholarly journals A survey of funders’ and institutions’ needs for understanding researchers’ open research practices

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz ◽  
Lauren Cadwallader
Keyword(s):  
Research Data ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Current State ◽  
Open Research ◽  
Level Of Satisfaction ◽  
Funding Agencies

A growing number of research-performing organisations (institutions) and funding agencies have policies that support open research practices -- sharing of research data, code and software. However, funders and institutions lack sufficient tools, time or resources to monitor compliance with these policies.To better understand funder and institution needs related to understanding open research practices of researchers, we targeted funders and institutions with a survey in 2020 and received 122 completed responses. Our survey assessed and scored, (from 0-100), the importance of and satisfaction with 17 factors associated with understanding open research practices. This includes things such as knowing if a research paper includes links to research data in a repository; knowing if a research grant made code available in a public repository; knowing if research data were made available in a reusable form; and knowing reasons why research data are not publicly available. Half of respondents had tried to evaluate researchers’ open research practices in the past and 78% plan to do this in the future. The most common method used to find out if researchers are practicing open research was personal contact with researchers and the most common reason for doing it was to increase their knowledge of researchers’ sharing practices (e.g. determine current state of sharing; track changes in practices over time; compare different departments/disciplines). The results indicate that nearly all of the 17 factors we asked about in the survey were underserved. The mean importance of all factors to respondents was 71.7, approaching the 75 threshold of “very important”. The average satisfaction of all factors was 41.3, indicating a negative level of satisfaction with ability to complete these tasks. The results imply an opportunity for better solutions to meet these needs.The growth of policies and requirements for making research data and code available does not appear to be matched with solutions for determining if these policies have been complied with. We conclude that publishers can better support some of the needs of funders and institutions by introducing simple solutions such as:-Mandatory data availability statements (DAS) in research articles -Not permitting generic “data available on request” statements-Enabling and encouraging the use of data repositories and other methods that make data available in a more reusable way-Providing visible links to research data on publications-Making information available on data and code sharing practices in publications available to institutions and funding agencies-Extending policies that require transparency in sharing of research data, to sharing of code

scholarly journals Incentivising research data sharing: a scoping review

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 355
Author(s):  
Helen Buckley Woods ◽  
Stephen Pinfield
Keyword(s):  
Data Sharing ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
Data Practices

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.

scholarly journals Factors Influencing Research Data Reuse in the Social Sciences: An Exploratory Study

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Gonçalves Curty
Keyword(s):  
Open Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
Perceived Effort ◽  
Facilitating Conditions ◽  
Access To Data

The development of e-Research infrastructure has enabled data to be shared and accessed more openly. Policy mandates for data sharing have contributed to the increasing availability of research data through data repositories, which create favourable conditions for the re-use of data for purposes not always anticipated by original collectors. Despite the current efforts to promote transparency and reproducibility in science, data re-use cannot be assumed, nor merely considered a ‘thrifting’ activity where scientists shop around in data repositories considering only the ease of access to data. The lack of an integrated view of individual, social and technological influential factors to intentional and actual data re-use behaviour was the key motivator for this study. Interviews with 13 social scientists produced 25 factors that were found to influence their perceptions and experiences, including both their unsuccessful and successful attempts to re-use data. These factors were grouped into six theoretical variables: perceived benefits, perceived risks, perceived effort, social influence, facilitating conditions, and perceived re-usability. These research findings provide an in-depth understanding about the re-use of research data in the context of open science, which can be valuable in terms of theory and practice to help leverage data re-use and make publicly available data more actionable. 

scholarly journals Tutkimusaineiston avoin jakaminen – tutkimusorganisaatioiden jäsenten käsityksiä, kokemuksia ja mielipiteitä

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Enwald
Keyword(s):  
Data Sharing ◽  
Data Storage ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Open Research ◽  
Research Organizations ◽  
Data Collection Instrument ◽  
In The Beginning

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.

scholarly journals Práticas e percepções dos pesquisadores brasileiros sobre serviços de acesso aberto a dados de pesquisa | Practices and perceptions of Brazilian researchers on open access to research data

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Elisa Caregnato ◽  
Samile Andrea de Souza Vanz ◽  
Caterina Groposo Pavão ◽  
Paula Caroline Jardim Schifino Passos ◽  
Eduardo Borges ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Exploratory Analysis ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Open Research

RESUMO O artigo apresenta análise exploratória das práticas e das percepções a respeito do acesso aberto a dados de pesquisa embasada em dados coletados por meio de survey, realizada com pesquisadores brasileiros. As 4.676 respostas obtidas demonstram que, apesar do grande interesse pelo tema, evidenciado pela prevalência de variáveis relacionadas ao compartilhamento e ao uso de dados e aos repositórios institucionais, não há clareza por parte dos sujeitos sobre os principais tópicos relacionados. Conclui-se que, apesar da maioria dos pesquisadores afirmar que compartilha dados de pesquisa, a disponibilização desses dados de forma aberta e irrestrita ainda não é amplamente aceita.Palavras-chave: Dados Abertos de Pesquisa; Compartilhamento de Dados; Reuso de Dados.ABSTRACT This article presents an exploratory analysis of the practices and perceptions regarding open access to research data based on information collected by a survey with Brazilian researchers. The 4,676 responses show that, despite the great interest in the topic, evidenced by the prevalence of variables related to data sharing and use and to institutional repositories, there is no clarity on the part of the subjects on the main related topics. We conclude that, although the majority of the researchers share research data, the availability of this data in an open and unrestricted way is not yet widely accepted.Keywords: Open Research Data; Data Sharing; Data Reuse.

scholarly journals PsychData – Experiences from 12 Years of Research Data Archiving

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Weiland ◽  
Ina Dehnhard
Keyword(s):  
Data Sharing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
German Research Foundation ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Data Archiving ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Domain Specific Knowledge ◽  
Meta Analyses

See video of the presentation.The benefits of making research data permanently accessible through data archives is widely recognized: costs can be reduced by reusing existing data, research results can be compared and validated with results from archived studies, fraud can be more easily detected, and meta-analyses can be conducted. Apart from that, authors may gain recognition and reputation for producing the datasets. Since 2003, the accredited research data center PsychData (part of the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information in Trier, Germany) documents and archives research data from all areas of psychology and related fields. In the beginning, the main focus was on datasets that provide a high potential for reuse, e.g. longitudinal studies, large-scale cross sectional studies, or studies that were conducted during historically unique conditions. Presently, more and more journal publishers and project funding agencies require researchers to archive their data and make them accessible for the scientific community. Therefore, PsychData also has to serve this need.In this presentation we report on our experiences in operating a discipline-specific research data archive in a domain where data sharing is met with considerable resistance. We will focus on the challenges for data sharing and data reuse in psychology, e.g.large amount of domain-specific knowledge necessary for data curationhigh costs for documenting the data because of a wide range on non-standardized measuressmall teams and little established infrastructures compared with the "big data" disciplinesstudies in psychology not designed for reuse (in contrast to the social sciences)data protectionresistance to sharing dataAt the end of the presentation, we will provide a brief outlook on DataWiz, a new project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In this project, tools will be developed to support researchers in documenting their data during the research phase.

scholarly journals Announcing the Journal of the Medical Library Association’s data sharing policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 107 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine G. Akers ◽  
Kevin B. Read ◽  
Liz Amos ◽  
Lisa M. Federer ◽  
Ayaba Logan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Medical Library ◽  
Firm Data ◽  
Published Research

As librarians are generally advocates of open access and data sharing, it is a bit surprising that peer-reviewed journals in the field of librarianship have been slow to adopt data sharing policies. Starting October 1, 2019, the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) is taking a step forward and implementing a firm data sharing policy to increase the rigor and reproducibility of published research, enable data reuse, and promote open science. This editorial explains the data sharing policy, describes how compliance with the policy will fit into the journal’s workflow, and provides further guidance for preparing for data sharing.

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