The University Library's research services team
are celebrating International Love Data Week which runs from 10 - 14 February 2020. We support
researchers and PhD students, in learning about effective data management
practices, services and tools as well as how to organise your data, and advise
on routes for data deposit, ensuring that, where feasible, you can make your
research data outputs open, accessible, and discoverable for others to discover
and reuse.
We are publishing a series of
themed blog posts this week on a variety of research data management topics and
we are of course always available for face-to-face research data consultations
to chat about your research and data outputs, providing support for data
management plans, outreach and advocacy within departments and colleges, and we
provide and support the research data infrastructure Figshare at Leicester, for
those who wish to deposit their data in our institutional data repository, when
a disciplinary one is not available.
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| Nugent, Marie; O'Regan, Laura (2018): HeLa cells undergoing metaphase. figshare. Figure. https://doi.org/10.25392/leicester.data.7406534.v1 |
The hashtag for Love Data Week is #lovedata20 and our second post is a brief overview of some of the sector news around open data and data sharing.
Open data - ongoing challenges and benefits
- 79% of 2019 respondents were supportive overall of a national mandate for making primary research openly available
- 67% of respondents think that funders should withhold funding from, or penalise in other ways, researchers who do not share their data if the funder has mandated that they do so
- 69% of respondents think that funders should make the sharing of research data part of their requirements for awarding grants
- 36% of respondents expressed the concern that their data may be misused if it was shared
- 42% of researchers would be encouraged to share their data if it resulted in a co-authorship
There was an interesting piece in the THE in January which caught my attention:
Open data ‘tougher’ than open access and needs ‘mindset change’
Huge rewards could ensue if governments bankroll the systematic sharing of research data, but experts warn of unintended consequences
It covers this question of reward and recognition and also about the funding required to support the infrastructure and also the skills necessary to drive forward this open data agenda.
Other items of interest that I have been watching closely include The Wellcome Trust's January press release and associated statement for the sharing of research data and findings relevant to the novel coronavirus (nCoV) outbreak.
We call on researchers, journals and funders to ensure that research findings and data relevant to this outbreak are shared rapidly and openly to inform the public health response and help save lives.
The signatories to this statement are significant and all have a commitment and awareness of the public health benefit to sharing data widely and as quickly as possible.
Also in January 2020 at the 'Data Summit in Paris' nine major networks of research-intensive universities signed the Sorbonne declaration on research data rights. One of the interesting aspects of this declaration is that universities and their researchers are encouraged to share data as much as possible.
If you are interested in sharing your research data then further information and contact details are available on our RDM website.