Managing Research Data: Data Sharing

There are benefits for the researcher, research sponsor, scientific community and public:

• Openness in science
• Promotes rigor and transparency
• Enhanced researcher reputation through increased citations
• Expansion of the scientific community, increased discussion and participation
• Increased opportunities for cross disciplinary research
• A better informed public increases trust in science and better decision making
• Allows optimized spend by research funders
• Increased opportunities for meta-analyses through combining datasets across laboratories

Researchers may be reluctant to share data because of concerns about:

• Inappropriate use due to poor understanding of research parameters and strategies
• Maintaining security and confidentiality of sensitive data
• Not getting credit or acknowledgement
• Loss of advantage when competing for research dollars

Some measures that can address researcher concerns:

• Include a data accessibility statement with each publication.
• Develop thorough metadata to describe all parameters and methods of collection and include them on the landing page for the date repository
• Archive and curate data with a reputable, carefully selected repository
• Provide recommended citation to ensure appropriate attribution
• Increase citations by making datasets discoverable and increasing secondary use of datasets
• Publish data papers that describe raw data, data processing and failed data for additional citations.

Steps for sharing data include:

• Create robust metadata to describe methodology, improving reproducibility and provide provenance
• Specify appropriate geography and time periods
• Use discipline specific thesauri and ontologies
• Include links to appropriate data catalogs, downloads
• Include archival and reference information such as properly formatted citations and universally unique identifiers
• Ask data contributors to review metadata for correctness and completeness
  • Correct methods and techniques described
  • All contributions acknowledged
  • All appropriate management reviews
  • Funding organization recognized
• Publish metadata and data in:
  • Federal data catalogs such as Data.gov

• Disciplinary data repositories i.e. Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB), Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network Data Portal
• NSF Public Access Repository (PAR)