New Report: “Research Data: The Researcher Perspective”

The following report will be presented on Friday, April 7, 2017 at the RDA [Research Data Alliance] Ninth Plenary Meeting in Barcelona, Spain.
From a Joint News Release:

The report, Open Data: The Researcher Perspective, is the result of a year-long, co-conducted study between Elsevier and the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), part of Leiden University, the Netherlands.
The study is based on a complementary methods approach consisting of a quantitative analysis of bibliometric and publication data, a global survey of 1,200 researchers and three case studies including in-depth interviews with key individuals involved in data collection, analysis and deposition in the fields of soil science, human genetics and digital humanities.

Selected Findings

• 73 percent of academics say access to research data helps them in their work; 34 percent do not publish their data
  Researchers acknowledge the benefits of open data, but data sharing practices are still limited. Reasons mentioned include: not enough training in data sharing, sharing data is not associated with credit or reward, research data management and privacy issues, proprietary aspects and ethics.

• Data sharing mandates by funders (or publishers) are not considered a driver by researchers to increase their data sharing practices; 64% of researchers believe they own the data they generated for their research.

• Public data sharing primarily occurs through the current publishing system; less than 15% of researchers share data in a data repository. When researchers do share their data directly, most (>80%) share with direct collaborators.

• 34% of researchers surveyed do not publish data at all. Those who do share data still use more traditional processes, such as through publication of data aggregated into tables and annexes.

• Analysis of publication in data journals reveals scattered practices: dedicated data journals are a new and small-scale phenomenon; the popularity is increasing quickly.

• There is an almost even split between researchers who believe there are no clear standards for citing published data (45%) and those who believe there are clear standards (41%).

• Data-sharing practices depend on the field: there is no general approach. In intensive data-sharing fields, data sharing practice is embedded into the research design and execution.

Direct to Full Text Report
48 pages; PDF.
See Also: RDA Ninth Plenary Meeting Website

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