Rewarding Research Data Management

Abstract

In the context of open science, good research data management (RDM), including data sharing and data reuse, has become a major goal of research policy. However, studies and monitors reveal that open science practices are not yet widely mainstream. Rewards and incentives have been suggested as a solution, to facilitate and accelerate the development of open and transparent RDM. Based on relevant literature, our paper provides a critical analysis of three main issues: what should be rewarded and incentivized, who should be rewarded, and what kind of rewards and incentives should be used? Concluding the analysis, we ask if it is really necessary and appropriate to consider RDM as an individual (behavioral) issue, as the main challenges are elsewhere, not personal, but technological, institutional and financial. CCS CONCEPTS• Information systems → Data management systems; ; • General and reference → General literature.

Research Data Management for Arts and Humanities

“…On the one hand, we see advocacy and research policy efforts 219 repeatedly trying to reform the current system, which is dominated by publisher prestige, to, instead, reward scholars for all activities and content types involved in research processes, not only for publications in the traditional, print legacy sense. These attempts have given rise to initiatives such as the Open Science Career Assessment Matrix (OS-CAM 220 , but, as pointed out by (Schöpfel and Azeroual 2021), such attempts do not cover the detailed and domain-specific guidance which could make them truly operational -for instance, exactly which people and which data-sharing behaviours should be rewarded (academics in the strict sense, or including research support personnel) -nor do they address anomalies such as the potential distortion of research interests in easily accessible and shareable data sources (Edmond 2015) as an entailment of data sharing mandates. Yet, the biggest problem is that although we see investment in data management and sharing increasingly become a condition of external research grant funding, they largely remain invisible when it comes to academic institutional hiring, tenure, and promotion criteria.…”

Open Science and Research Data Management: A FAIR European Postgraduate Programme

“…Under this educational context, it has been documented that OS and effective RDM have become a priority for organisations globally [7], since funding agencies and publishers now require scientists to share their data effectively. On the one hand, as it is widely recognised that OS comprises several interdisciplinary dimensions.…”