Public trust in science can be boosted if major funding bodies adopt improved, standardized policies for data sharing and open access research, say the authors of a new report.
Containing contributions from a range of experienced authors – including from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), other external commentators and Ripeta itself – the report deals with issues of fostering public trust in science, and improving integrity in research through policies, data sharing, and open access practices.
It also includes a comparison of the policies and practices of five of the world’s major research funders.
Dr Leslie McIntosh, Founder and CEO of Ripeta, says: “In this rapidly changing world with trust in science having been shaken to its foundations, now more than ever it’s critical that we look at all aspects of how trust in science can be best supported and strengthened.
“There have been several high-profile cases in recent years in which seemingly legitimate studies have been found to include fabricated data, and this helps to illustrate what’s at stake: millions, or potentially billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money going to waste on studies that could have been diverted towards more worthy research, and a risk to public health, for example, from having illegitimate research shape clinical approaches.
[Clip]
Exclusive analysis by Ripeta in one section of the report compares the policies and practices of five major world funders: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the European Commission (EC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
The analysis shows that although each of the funders have their own policies in place to support data sharing, there are discrepancies between those policies and how they translate into practice.
For example, the number of research papers published in open access (OA) journals varied greatly depending on the funder. The NIH (95%) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (93%) far outstripped the representation of OA publications of other funders, especially the NSFC (33%).
Figure: Percentage of open access publications in sample by funding agency. See The State of Trust & Integrity in Research report for more detail: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20497062
In addition to its detailed analysis of the five major funders, Ripeta found that with regard to 62 key funders worldwide:
71% of funders required data management plans
68% of funders covered expenses of data management and sharing
66% specifically mentioned data sharing repositories as a mechanism of making data publicly accessible
26% of policies mentioned how long data should be retained.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR): The Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD) of France and the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) are pleased to announce ...
From The Getty Library / Getty Research Institute: OpenBibArt, an open-access art-historical database, is now online, making nearly a century of western bibliography on art history easily available to all. ...
From Oxford Languages (via YouTube): Oxford Languages, a division of Oxford University Press and publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African ...
From the New Orleans Public Library: New Orleans’ first music streaming platform to feature exclusively local artists, Crescent City Sounds, is now available for listening. Created by the New Orleans Public ...
From the EPA: …the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced two new online tools available to the public that provide additional information on environmental enforcement and compliance in their communities. ...
Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: A Vision for Protecting Our Civil Rights in the Algorithmic Age (via OSTP: The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) Internet ...
From The Washington Post: [Marcus] Gould’s banner — and 1,601 other artifacts from the Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence — was saved. More than two years after he attached it to ...
From The New York Public Library: Spider-Senses will be tingling across New York City as The New York Public Library (NYPL) and Marvel Entertainment join forces to release a special, ...
The abstract linked below was posted today by The Journal of Academic Librarianship. Title Ethical Issues and Learning Analytics: Are Academic Library Practitioners Prepared? Authors Kyle M.L. Jones Indiana University-Indianapolis ...
From the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): The Institute of Museum and Library services announced today that under a new Executive Order issued by President Biden on Sept. 30, 2022, ...
From STAT: In August, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy released a memo directing all federal agencies to form plans to make all federally funded research publications ...
From the Federal Depository Library Program: The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed legislation making a 10-year term appointment for the GPO Director, thus aligning the position with the ...
