If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them? Data Sharing and Reuse in the Long Tail of Science and Technology

Abstract

Research on practices to share and reuse data will inform the design of infrastructure to support data collection, management, and discovery in the long tail of science and technology. These are research domains in which data tend to be local in character, minimally structured, and minimally documented. We report on a ten-year study of the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. We found that CENS researchers are willing to share their data, but few are asked to do so, and in only a few domain areas do their funders or journals require them to deposit data. Few repositories exist to accept data in CENS research areas.. Data sharing tends to occur only through interpersonal exchanges. CENS researchers obtain data from repositories, and occasionally from registries and individuals, to provide context, calibration, or other forms of background for their studies. Neither CENS researchers nor those who request access to CENS data appear to use external data for primary research questions or for replication of studies. CENS researchers are willing to share data if they receive credit and retain first rights to publish their results. Practices of releasing, sharing, and reusing of data in CENS reaffirm the gift culture of scholarship, in which goods are bartered between trusted colleagues rather than treated as commodities.

Navigating the unfolding open data landscape in ecology and evolution

“…The Registry of Research Data Repositories (http://re3Data.org) currently lists more than 3,500 data repositories, out of which around 2,000 are classified under natural and life sciences. Other methods of data archiving, such as publishing data in the paper supplements or on personal websites, prevent data from being easily found, or attributed when used 6,7 .…”

“…As scientific fields that are motivated by the search for unifying mechanisms, ecology and evolution inherently lend themselves to the value of open data [3][4][5][6] . Yet, until now, the application of open data has not pervaded these natural sciences [6][7][8] .…”

“…However, the 'long tail' of ecological research (many individual projects producing small-scale data, see Box 1) has failed to fully embrace the open data movement 7,11 , probably because of the heterogeneous nature of ecological research (for example, specific taxa, systems, regions or methodologies).…”

“…Further benefits include the re-analysis of data using new statistical approaches, error checking or use of existing data to address new questions 11,14 . The relevance of ecological data to addressing many challenges of the Anthropocene largely depends on the power of combined ecological data, supplemented with the data from other disciplines such as geosciences, or economics 7,13,14 . For example, data reuse has been indispensable to our understanding of the climate system, and it has been pivotal in allowing us to constrain projections about future changes including warming 15 and biodiversity loss 16 .…”

Exploring openness in data and science: What is “open,” to whom, when, and why?

“…Sharing data with unknown audiences is yet harder. Research data sharing practices vary greatly depending on the format of data, the ways that data are handled and interpreted, and the disciplines or fields involved (Wallis, Rolando, & Borgman, 2013). A primary challenge to data sharing and integration is decisions made locally about curation and documentation.…”