New report of CWTS and Elsevier about data sharing by researchers

A change in scientific culture must ensure an increase in data sharing, according to the report "Open data - the researcher perspective" of CWTS (Leiden University) and Elsevier. Researchers are positive about data sharing, but are reluctant because they are not encouraged and trained in this. For this report, 1,200 researchers worldwide were questioned through an online survey.

Trainings and resources about sharing, managing and reusing data can encourage researchers to share more data. Rewarding data sharing can also be encouraging.

The research also shows that many researchers consider data as personal property and are only willing to share data when they jointly conduct research. It also appears that researchers who share their data do this mainly with direct colleagues and not through a platform, which indicates that trust plays an important role.

According to the report, disciplinary, legal, cultural and local differences regarding data privacy must be taken into account. Thus, the approach for data sharing differs from field of study. In sectors where data is an integral part of the research, such as human genetics, data sharing is embedded in the conduct of the research. In disciplines where this is not essential, the way data is shared is not uniform and happens on a smaller scale.