Feature


“Three quarters of respondents had already made their research data openly available”


of 100 psychological experiments published in respected journals in 2008. In Science, the researchers revealed how they had found that only 36 out of 100 of the replications showed statistically significant results, compared to 97 out of the 100 original experiments. Controversy, criticism, and even what has been termed ‘a crisis around replication’ ensued. But for Nosek, the research was a success as it increased awareness of replication challenges, and for him, also illustrated the key role data sharing has in reproducibility. ‘If I can access data from the original


study, then I understand more easily how the researchers made their decisions, how they got to their inferences and at least reproduce the evidence in those original studies, prior to even trying to recreate [that study],’ he says. But the organisation isn’t just about


reproducibility research. It has launched ‘Open Practice badges’ to acknowledge open practices and produced TOP – Transparency and Openess Promotion – standards, embraced by more than 500 journals, including Science. Meanwhile it also provides Register


Reports, in which peer review for participating journals is conducted prior to


data collection and analysis, to encourage transparency across the research lifecycle and remove bias against negative results. And a preregistration challenge offers 1,000 researchers the opportunity to win $1000 each for publishing results of preregistered research. But perhaps most pertinent to data sharing, the organisation has established an open source software project, the Open Science Framework, to promote open collaboration by connecting data repositories. Participants include Mendeley, Figshare, GitHub and more. And as Nosek says: ‘Our real hope is that in the next year or two, many more repositories will connect to our framework to help researchers be more efficient in data sharing practices.’ Indeed, beyond the brave new


opportunities that data sharing brings, myriad practical issues must be tackled first, and efficient practices is only the beginning. According to Digital Science’s Hook, many researchers store what he calls ‘small data’ on, say, Dropbox and pen-drives, never to see the light of day. Some researchers still struggle to know where to share data, and of those that do share, many are unsure about licensing conditions and the extent to which the


Touting ‘open, transparent and reproducible science’, the Center for Open Science is said to operate with a ‘technology start-up’ mindset


data can be accessed or re-used. ‘Our survey shows researchers are using Google Drive, Dropbox, Figshare and GitHub,’ says Hook. ‘But we are also seeing issues around, say, understanding licences, industrial contracts and national laws.’ Taroni from Nature Physics agrees, and has seen many of his authors grapple with where to deposit data. ‘There isn’t an agreed-upon standard so that everyone in a community can say, “Oh that’s where I submit my data”,’ he adds. Initiatives such as the Open Science


Framework are driving change, but Taroni also believes a definite role exists for publishers. ‘We need to give researchers a clear framework so they can satisfy our policies without feeling like they’re jumping through more hoops,’ he says. At the same time, Hook believes many misunderstandings can be cleared up by educating researchers on how to share data within a research group and publicly. ‘Right now, this is really an issue of education, which I believe is very aligned with the skillset of librarians and information professionals.’ But education aside, the sharing of


sensitive data is still a massive issue. For example, data may be covered by the Data Protection Act, obtained under a non- disclosure agreement or relate to a patent. Solutions may include depositing this


information in a repository under an embargo or in a secure data repository, but for academics in disciplines such as psychology and clinical research, deeper privacy concerns emerge. As Nosek points out: ‘We have to be very careful when working with human data, and privacy considerations will always prevent data sharing from being entirely open.’ ‘Good data sharing standards must


incorporate these concerns, rather than being used as a blunt instrument to share data,’ he adds. Still, the future looks bright for data sharing, and Hook, for one, is optimistic. ‘In 2012, people were talking about open data in somewhat concerned terms; it was relatively new and people weren’t engaging with it,’ he says. ‘Four years later we’re in a world where 75 per cent of people on our survey have shared data – now that’s a sea-change.’


www.researchinformation.info | @researchinfo December 2016/January 2017 Research Information 11


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