Hidden concerns of sharing research data by low/middle-income country scientists

Abstract

There has considerable interest in bringing low/middle-income countries (LMIC) scientists into discussions on Open Data – both as contributors and users. The establishment of in situ data sharing practices within LMIC research institutions is vital for the development of an Open Data landscape in the Global South. Nonetheless, many LMICs have significant challenges – resource provision, research support and extra-laboratory infrastructures. These low-resourced environments shape data sharing activities, but are rarely examined within Open Data discourse. In particular, little attention is given to how these research environments shape scientists’ perceptions of data sharing (dis)incentives. This paper expands on these issues of incentivizing data sharing, using data from a quantitative survey disseminated to life scientists in 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This interrogated not only perceptions of data sharing amongst LMIC scientists, but also how these are connected to the research environments and daily challenges experienced by them. The paper offers a series of analysis around commonly cited (dis)incentives such as data sharing as a means of improving research visibility; sharing and funding; and online connectivity. It identifies key areas that the Open Data community need to consider if true openness in research is to be established in the Global South.

Data Sharing Practices among Researchers at South African Universities

“…was produced by only one (0.8%) researcher. Previous studies (Kvale 2012;Buys and Shaw 2015;Elsayed & Saleh 2018;and Bezuidenhout & Chakauya 2018) also found similar to the current one. All these studies found that the majority of researchers produced standard office documents.…”

“…Schöpfel and Prost (2016) point out that some of the similar studies' response rates are partially unknown as no one knows the whole population of the studies. Bezuidenhout and Chakauya (2018) only managed 100 responses from 13 countries. Kuipers and Van der Hoeven (2009) could only manage 46 respondents from the Netherlands, 50 from France, 51 from Italy, 67 from Germany and 129 from the United Kingdom.…”

A systematic literature review of researchers’ and healthcare professionals’ attitudes towards the secondary use and sharing of health administrative and clinical trial data

“…Eighteen [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] of the 67 articles addressed the perspectives of clinical and scientific researchers, data custodians, and ethics committees and were analysed for this paper ( Table 2). The majority (n = 16) of articles focused on the views of researchers and health professionals, [18-22, 24-26, 28-35], only one article focused on data custodians [27] and ethics committees [23] respectively.…”

“…Several study methodologies were used, including surveys (n = 11) [24][25][26][27][29][30][31][32][33][34][35], interviews and focus groups (n = 6) [18][19][20][21][22][23], and mixed methods (n = 1) [28]. Studies were conducted in a several countries and regions; a breakdown by country and study is available in Table 3.…”

“…In addition to papers focusing on general health and sciences [18,21,22,[24][25][26][29][30][31][32][33][34], two articles included views from both science and non-science disciplines [27,28]. Multiple sclerosis (MS) [19], mental health [35], and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)/tuberculosis (TB) [20] were each the subject of one article.…”