Point of View
POINT OF VIEW
Making data sharing the new norm is the latest challenge for academic publishers
WORDS Grace Baynes
able and useful way” was the most-cited reason for not sharing data (46% of respondents), followed by “Unsure about copyright and licensing” (37%),
“Not knowing which repository to use” (33%) and “Lack of time” (26%).
US and UK funders have moved early to encourage M
ANY OF YOU will be familiar with Open Access with regards to journals, but to achieve real “open science”, we must open
up all areas of research, including research data. Data sharing brings many benefits to societ. Government open data has boosted the economy and delivered new business, services and products— according to the Open Data Institute, the value of public-sector open data is between 0.4% and 1.5% of an economy’s GDP. In research, the Human Genome Project demonstrated the value of making data open. In 2001, Springer published the first draſt of the human genome in Nature, and the data was made openly available. The project has contributed more than $1tn to the US economy, according to an inde- pendent report. As well as direct economic bene- fits, sharing and managing data drives productivit in terms of publications and citations. It can help reduce duplication of effort and is a foundation for reproducibilit research. Despite this, in 2017 only around half of research
data was shared (according to surveys) and a far smaller proportion was shared openly or in ways that maximise discoverabilit and reuse. Last year, Springer Nature asked more than 7,000 research- ers about data sharing: we wanted to understand how widespread it is, how researchers are sharing, the challenges they face and where they need help. Our findings are published in Practical Challenges for Researchers in Data Sharing, accessible through [online resource] figshare along with the survey data. When submiting to a journal, 63% of respondents
shared data files, either as supplementary informa- tion (42%), in a repository (41%), or both. Yet the willingness is there: 80% of researchers surveyed in The State of Open Data 2017 were willing to share their data; the same proportion were amenable to using others’ data.
The challenges researchers face include a lack of time and expertise in how to prepare data so it can be easily found and used by others, and where to deposit it. In other words, how to make data truly open. In our survey, “Organising data in a present-
and require data sharing through policies, pilots and infrastructure, yet in those countries the percent- age of researchers data sharing is lower than the global average. So while funder mandates continue to be essential, policy must be coupled with greater support for researchers and easier routes to sharing data optimally. This requires the research commu- nit’s concerted atention and collaborative solutions from funders, institutions, libraries and publishers. For data sharing in repositories to become the norm, we need multiple approaches.
What publishers can do Publishers can help to overcome many of these obstacles. At Springer Nature we are strong advo- cates for data availabilit through our editorial and journal policies, having introduced standard journal data policies in 2016. Through the Research Data Alliance, a group of publishers, funders and research institutions are collaborating to agree a framework for journal data policies in order to reduce complex- it for authors and encourage good practice. Springer Nature also offers a free Research Data
Support Helpdesk and a recommended list of reposi- tories, as well as a service to help researchers and institutions deposit their data. While sharing data as supplementary information is beter than not sharing data at all, it is a sub-optimal solution. Data put in a repository is more accessible, with meta- data and persistent identifiers. A number of publish- ers, including Springer Nature, are now depositing supplementary information into publicly accessible repositories. But we need to make it worth research- ers’ time to share their data. Incentives are sorely lacking. Data publishing, and beter data citation, are part of the solution. Our research data journal Scientific Data and our new article tpe, data note, in BMC Research Notes both provide authors with a publication credit.
Institutions, funders, libraries, publishers, and
researchers all have a role to play. Let us join up to find the best ways of unlocking the global potential of research data. ×
Grace Baynes is vice-president of data and new prod- uct development for open research at Springer Nature. Practical Challenges... is available through figshare at
doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5975011
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10th April 2018
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