Sowing the seed: Incentives and Motivations for Sharing Research Data, a researcher's perspective

Sowing the seed: Incentives and Motivations for Sharing Research Data, a researcher's perspective. Knowledge Exchange. November 2014. PDF.
This study has gathered evidence, examples and opinions on incentives for research data sharing from the researchers’ point of view. Using this study will help provide recommendations on developing policies and best practices for data access, preservation, and re-use. A emerging theme today is to make it possible for all researchers to share data and to change the collective attitude towards sharing.

A DCC project, investigating researchers’ attitudes and approaches towards data deposit,
sharing, reuse, curation and preservation found that the data sharing requirements should be defined at the finer-grained level, such as the research group.When researchers talk about ‘data sharing’ there are different modes of data sharing, such as:

1. private management sharing, 
2. collaborative sharing, 
3. peer exchange, 
4. sharing for transparent governance, 
5. community sharing and 
6. public sharing.

Important motivations for researchers to share research data are:

1. When data sharing is an essential part of the research process; 
2. Direct career benefits (greater visibility and recognition of one’s work, reciprocal data)
3. As a normal part of their research circle or discipline;
4. Existing funder and publisher expectations, policies, infrastructure and data services

Some points on preservation of research information for research institution and research funders:

• Recognize and value data as part of research assessment and career advancement
• Set preservation standards for data formats, file formats, and documentation
• Develop clear policies on data sharing and preservation 
• Provide training and support for researchers and students to manage and share data so it becomes part of standard research practice.
• Make all data related to a published manuscript available

Actions of some organizations regarding data management and preservation:

• The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences requests its researchers to digitally preserve research data, ideally via deposit in recognised repositories, to make them openly accessible as much as possible; and to include a data section in every research plan stating how the data produced or collected during the project will be dealt with.
• The Alliance of German Science Organisations adopted principles for the handling of research data, supporting long-term preservation and open access to research data for the benefit of science.
• Research organizations receiving EPSRC funding will from May 2015 be expected to have appropriate policies, processes and infrastructure in place to preserve research data, to publish metadata for their research data holdings, and to provide access to research data securely for 10 years beyond the last data request.
• The European Commission has called  for coordinated actions to drive forward open access, long-term preservation and capacity building to promote open science for all EC and national research funding.
• The UK Economic and Social Research Council has mandated the archiving of research data from all funded research projects. This policy goes hand in hand with the funding of supporting data infrastructure and services. The UK Data Service provides the data infrastructure to curate,
• preserve and disseminate research data, and provides training and support to researchers.

Digital Preservation Matters.