Feature
Open data: growing pains
While resarchers, publishers and funders warm to data sharing, issues over misuse, citation and credit remain, reports Rebecca Pool
In its latest State of Open Data survey, Figshare revealed that a hefty 64 per cent of respondents made their data openly available in 2018. The percentage, up four per cent from
last year and seven per cent from 2016, indicates a healthy awareness of open data and for Daniel Hook, chief executive of Figshare’s parent company, Digital Science, it spells good news. ‘This figure is a high percentage and has always been higher than I would have expected since our first survey in 2016,’ he says. ‘In a single decade, we’re probably going to hit 70 per cent, and given the open data movement hasn’t really been in existence since much before 2010, this is a really big achievement.’ Partnering with Springer-Nature,
Figshare – an online repository for academic research – set up its State of Open Data survey to examine the attitudes and experiences of more than 1,000 researchers working with open data around the world. Now in its third year, results suggest open data is becoming increasingly embedded in research communities. For example, the majority of
respondents – 63 per cent – support national mandates for open data, an eight per cent rise from 2017. And, at the same
4 Research Information December 2018/January 2019
time, nearly half of the respondents – 46 per cent – reckon data citations motivate them to make data openly available. This figure is up seven per cent from last year. The respondents’ leaning to national mandates comes at a time when funding bodies worldwide have laid out policies on data sharing, while government organisations are warming to open data. Indeed, in October this year, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology released its open science and open data mandate – The Measures for Managing Scientific Data – to improve open sharing. Meanwhile, the European Commission has just mandated open access to research data as well as publications, as part of its proposed €100 billion Horizon Europe research budget, running from 2021 to 2027.
And, according to Hook, the survey
respondents’ growing thirst for data citations also coincides with general industry development. ‘I think people are getting more comfortable with the idea that a dataset is “a thing”,’ he says. ‘Open data is much more on [researchers’] radars and importantly, more and more institutions and funders are recognising that the production of a dataset is valuable.’ Given these developments, Digital
g @researchinfo |
www.researchinformation.info
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32
