Abstract

Researchers are increasingly encouraged to share data supporting their publications. The case for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data is reflected in a large number of initiatives to make this achievable while supporting data integrity and openness.

With a growing number of funders, publishers and institutions worldwide mandating the open access of articles and data, there is a growing need for sustainable infrastructure to support these requirements. Making all of the products of research openly available helps validate and reproduce research and reduces the duplication of effort across labs.

In partnership with Springer Nature, Figshare runs the longest running longitudinal study on the subject - The State of Open Data - which was created in 2016 to examine attitudes and experiences of researchers working with open data – sharing it, reusing it, and redistributing it. This year we see a lot of researchers are expecting more of the funders and national governments to support and enforce the new mandates. Some key highlights include:

When asked what the key reasons were for creating a data management plan, the response selected most frequently was that it was a requirement of the funder who was supporting the research (44%).
When all respondents were asked to assess the level of support that they felt was available in helping to plan, manage or share their data from either their institution, funder or publisher, their own institution was rated as excellent or good most frequently (49%). This was significantly more than that thought to be provided by Funders (38%).
44% of the respondents agreed that they felt funders should withhold funding from or penalise researchers who do not share their data if it was previously mandated by the funder that they should do so at the grant application stage.

While most trends are encouraging around the adoption and acceptance of open data, the research community is now demanding more enforcement of the mandates that have been adopted by many governments and funders.

At Figshare we have seen many engaged funders and governments, most notably the recent memorandum from the Whitehouse Office of Science and Technology Policy, requiring that data that they fund be published. This has also led to national initiatives for Research data management and dissemination. This session will cover how different countries have tackled this approach and the reasons for doing so. This includes thematic repositories and institutional data repository approaches.

Those interested in understanding what is happening with research data management globally may be interested in hearing how trends will affect researchers interactions with publishers and institutions, as well as ways in which compliance with data policies is likely to be checked in the future.