...Research funders...are acting swiftly to help establish...data sharing [as the norm]. Numerous funders, national and international research councils as well as private charities and sponsors, are already requiring the open dissemination of datasets once a research project is complete. This complements the growing number of similar requirements that research articles are made available for sharing through Open Access once ready for publication. Interestingly, the practice in many communities is that the data-sharing happens long before project completion, and sometimes in real-time as the data are generated.
We looked in some detail at data practices in eight different disciplinary areas and the findings were published in a report for the Research Information Network earlier this year. Amongst other findings were two things that relate to much of the current discussion about data....
But back to data, and how data dissemination can be rewarded. No-one has the answer yet, but the issue is being talked about a lot. If researchers are to produce and share datasets, they should see some sort of real reward for this. Those who already share told us that they do so for two reasons. First, in their discipline it is seen as A Good Thing and they want the 'warm, fuzzy feeling' of being a good guy in their peer community. Second, if they make their data available to all then in many disciplines they are likely to be included as an author on any research articles arising from the re-use of those data by others. This is how things are working out in practice at the moment. That doesn't mean that such practices will carry effectively across other disciplines, nor that they will persist optimally even in disciplines where they are common. A better system for assessing and rewarding data outputs themselves, and the dissemination behaviour of the data creators, is needed. The bodies that can influence that most positively and properly are the research funders and universities, by developing the means to explicitly reward data dissemination in a manner analogous to the way they have always rewarded the publication of articles....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/03/2008 12:21:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
