Why share data?

At the heart of the scientific process is a raw material without which research would be impossible: research data. Oftentimes a researcher or research group works with data and then stores it on a USB stick in a drawer after the project is done. Sharing one's data, however, enables round-the-globe academic synergies. By sharing data, other researchers can test, replicate and re-analyse them.

Enabling meta analyses is another reason for more openness with one's data. In some disciplines, that encourage an open data culture, errors in well-established measuring methods or tools have been discovered by meta-analyses that showed inconsistencies across research data. In this way meta analyses based on shared data can help avoid false and distorted results.

Who supports data sharing?

Reserach data and publications can be archived and published in online repositories. In recent years a large number of repositories have come into existence. Depending on the discipline, the choice can be quite varied.

An overview of existing repositories world-wide as well as a search function with many useful filters is provided by re3data. It is possible, for example, to filter for repositories from specific disciplines or for repositories who provide different access options (open access, restricted access).

Another possibility is is the publishing of research data in data journals. These journals are dedicated to the description, documentation and evaluation of research data. Data journals usually do not require a scientific publication, but a description of the data in the form of a paper or a Data Curation Profile. The data set itself is archived in a repository with the journal article referencing the data set via a persistent identifier.

Best Practices for data sharing can also be found on the webpages of the UK DATA Archive.

References

1. ↑ Piwowar, H. A., Day, R. S., Fridsma, D. B. (2007). Sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate. PloS one, 2 (3), e308.