A Survey of Researchers’ Needs and Priorities for Data Sharing

One of the ways in which the publisher PLOS supports open science is via a stringent data availability policy established in 2014. Despite this policy, and more data sharing policies being introduced by other organizations, best practices for data sharing are adopted by a minority of researchers in...

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Autores principales:	Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, James Harney, Lauren Cadwallader
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Ubiquity Press 2021
Materias:	open research data sharing publishing practices survey results open science reuse of research data Science (General) Q1-390
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/d68023830520411eb415236ac1ce66a9
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:d68023830520411eb415236ac1ce66a92021-11-08T08:06:15ZA Survey of Researchers’ Needs and Priorities for Data Sharing1683-147010.5334/dsj-2021-031https://doaj.org/article/d68023830520411eb415236ac1ce66a92021-10-01T00:00:00Zhttps://datascience.codata.org/articles/1332https://doaj.org/toc/1683-1470One of the ways in which the publisher PLOS supports open science is via a stringent data availability policy established in 2014. Despite this policy, and more data sharing policies being introduced by other organizations, best practices for data sharing are adopted by a minority of researchers in their publications. Problems with effective research data sharing persist and these problems have been quantified by previous research as a lack of time, resources, incentives, and/or skills to share data. In this study we built on this research by investigating the importance of tasks associated with data sharing, and researchers’ satisfaction with their ability to complete these tasks. By investigating these factors we aimed to better understand opportunities for new or improved solutions for sharing data. In May-June 2020 we surveyed researchers from Europe and North America to rate tasks associated with data sharing on (i) their importance and (ii) their satisfaction with their ability to complete them. We received 617 completed responses. We calculated mean importance and satisfaction scores to highlight potential opportunities for new solutions to and compare different cohorts. Tasks relating to research impact, funder compliance, and credit had the highest importance scores. 52% of respondents reuse research data but the average satisfaction score for obtaining data for reuse was relatively low. Tasks associated with sharing data were rated somewhat important and respondents were reasonably well satisfied in their ability to accomplish them. Notably, this included tasks associated with best data sharing practice, such as use of data repositories. However, the most common method for sharing data was in fact via supplemental files with articles, which is not considered to be best practice. We presume that researchers are unlikely to seek 'new' solutions to a problem or task that they are satisfied in their 'ability' to accomplish, even if many do not attempt this task. This implies there are few opportunities for 'new solutions or tools' to meet these researcher needs. Publishers can likely meet these needs for data sharing by working to seamlessly integrate 'existing' solutions that reduce the effort or behaviour change involved in some tasks, and focusing on advocacy and education around the benefits of sharing data. There may however be opportunities – unmet researcher needs – in relation to better supporting data reuse, which could be met in part by strengthening data sharing policies of journals and publishers, and improving the discoverability of data associated with published articles.Iain HrynaszkiewiczJames HarneyLauren CadwalladerUbiquity Pressarticleopen researchdata sharingpublishing practicessurvey resultsopen sciencereuse of research dataScience (General)Q1-390ENData Science Journal, Vol 20, Iss 1 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	open research data sharing publishing practices survey results open science reuse of research data Science (General) Q1-390
spellingShingle	open research data sharing publishing practices survey results open science reuse of research data Science (General) Q1-390 Iain Hrynaszkiewicz James Harney Lauren Cadwallader A Survey of Researchers’ Needs and Priorities for Data Sharing
description	One of the ways in which the publisher PLOS supports open science is via a stringent data availability policy established in 2014. Despite this policy, and more data sharing policies being introduced by other organizations, best practices for data sharing are adopted by a minority of researchers in their publications. Problems with effective research data sharing persist and these problems have been quantified by previous research as a lack of time, resources, incentives, and/or skills to share data. In this study we built on this research by investigating the importance of tasks associated with data sharing, and researchers’ satisfaction with their ability to complete these tasks. By investigating these factors we aimed to better understand opportunities for new or improved solutions for sharing data. In May-June 2020 we surveyed researchers from Europe and North America to rate tasks associated with data sharing on (i) their importance and (ii) their satisfaction with their ability to complete them. We received 617 completed responses. We calculated mean importance and satisfaction scores to highlight potential opportunities for new solutions to and compare different cohorts. Tasks relating to research impact, funder compliance, and credit had the highest importance scores. 52% of respondents reuse research data but the average satisfaction score for obtaining data for reuse was relatively low. Tasks associated with sharing data were rated somewhat important and respondents were reasonably well satisfied in their ability to accomplish them. Notably, this included tasks associated with best data sharing practice, such as use of data repositories. However, the most common method for sharing data was in fact via supplemental files with articles, which is not considered to be best practice. We presume that researchers are unlikely to seek 'new' solutions to a problem or task that they are satisfied in their 'ability' to accomplish, even if many do not attempt this task. This implies there are few opportunities for 'new solutions or tools' to meet these researcher needs. Publishers can likely meet these needs for data sharing by working to seamlessly integrate 'existing' solutions that reduce the effort or behaviour change involved in some tasks, and focusing on advocacy and education around the benefits of sharing data. There may however be opportunities – unmet researcher needs – in relation to better supporting data reuse, which could be met in part by strengthening data sharing policies of journals and publishers, and improving the discoverability of data associated with published articles.
format	article
author	Iain Hrynaszkiewicz James Harney Lauren Cadwallader
author_facet	Iain Hrynaszkiewicz James Harney Lauren Cadwallader
author_sort	Iain Hrynaszkiewicz
title	A Survey of Researchers’ Needs and Priorities for Data Sharing
title_short	A Survey of Researchers’ Needs and Priorities for Data Sharing
title_full	A Survey of Researchers’ Needs and Priorities for Data Sharing
title_fullStr	A Survey of Researchers’ Needs and Priorities for Data Sharing
title_full_unstemmed	A Survey of Researchers’ Needs and Priorities for Data Sharing
title_sort	survey of researchers’ needs and priorities for data sharing
publisher	Ubiquity Press
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/d68023830520411eb415236ac1ce66a9
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A Survey of Researchers’ Needs and Priorities for Data Sharing

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