Forgotten treasures: the fate of data in animal behavior studies

Abstract

PrePrints AbstractPublished discussions on data stewardship often focus on standardized datasets whose reuse patterns are known. Improvements in stewardship of animal behavior data are virtually absent and lag behind other disciplines such as molecular biology and systematics. In this essay, we discuss best practices of three key aspects related to the collection and archival of behavioral data: data supporting published results; data collected from field observations; and the potential of museum specimens as source of data to animal behavior and ecology. To quantify how much data is shared in publications we reviewed selected journals in animal behavior and behavioral ecology. We found that only an extremely small proportion of the articles published in 2013 made even part of their data available. We discuss about the benefits of making data available, review resources available for data archiving and provide practical guidance for ethologists. We discuss and provide examples of the amount of ethological and ecological data that can be recorded during field observations. To investigate the potential of museum specimens as source of data, we surveyed researchers working in areas related to ecology, animal behavior, and systematics. Both ethologists and systematists agreed that natural history information stored in collections would be a valuable source of data. We make recommendations to enhance data collection and stewardship from the point of view of researchers in animal behavior sciences, considering the special characteristics of the discipline and the type of data that is often produced. We suggest that there is a large amount of crucial data about natural history, ecology and behavior that investigators could glean from collections. Although it is difficult to appreciate the relevance of data for future studies at the time of publication, such data may inspire fruitful opportunities that we cannot afford to lose. PrePrintsData collection is a fundamental step of research and often the most expensive with respect to both time and money, yet the fate of data after publication is often neglected (Heidorn, 2008).Despite willingness to populate digital repositories with data, the fact that many researchers have reservations about doing so (Tenopir et al., 2011;Wolkovich et al., 2012) seems to explain the general lack of data available for publications in the biological sciences (Hartter et al. 2013;Zamir, 2013 -but see Wallis et al., 2013. There are a few exceptions, such as molecular journals that require sequence data archival in publicly accessible repositories among other examples such as the journals Evolution and the Public Library of Science (PLoS). The main reasons why authors opt to avoid storing data in digital repositories are related to concerns about lack of time and appropriate tools to prepare and upload datasets, the potential for data misuse (Whitlock, 2011), and lack of personal benefits (Arzberger et al., 2004). In this essay, we surveyed and evaluated how much data from animal behavior is ...

When Data Sharing Gets Close to 100%: What Human Paleogenetics Can Teach the Open Science Movement

“…However, no true comparison may be carried out between our results and literature data since both the definition of data, inclusion criteria and workflow vary substantially among studies [15], [27], [28], [30], [31], [32].…”

“…Apart from their symbolic value, identifying such positive examples may have a double outcome: (i) identify conditions and practices which may help spread data sharing; (ii) help understand whether and how data openness may play a role in the development of specific research fields. Unfortunately, studies carried out to date have not only failed to identify such "flagship" research fields, but also highlighted that data sharing is far from being common practice in all the research fields investigated so far [11], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28].…”