Sharing Research Data in Academia

Objective of the project and research questions

Shared research data in academia is associated with considerable benefits. It makes studies reproducible and enables other researchers to ask new questions based on old data. Thereby data sharing in academia makes research more transparent and fosters innovation. However, curating, archiving and making data available for others is far from being the rationale for good scientific practice. The research project “Data sharing” aims to identify factors for efficient data re-use.

Research questions:

• Which factors affect datasharing?
• How can these factors be structured and weighted?
• What is the relation between the socioeconomic characteristics of the researcher and datasharing?
• What is the relation between personality and datasharing?
• What are the relevant legal questions?
• Should data be curated centrally or decentrally?
• Which usability factors must repositories fulfil?

Partners

• Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society
• German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin)
• ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (ZBW)

Contact

• Benedikt Fecher (Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society & DIW Berlin)
• Marcel Hebing (DIW Berlin)
• Dr Sascha Friesike (Alexander von Humboldt Institut for Internet and Society)
• Dr Stephanie Linek (ZBW)

Publications

• Fecher, Benedikt, Sascha Friesike, and Marcel Hebing. “What Drives Academic Data Sharing?” SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 655 (2014).
• Fecher, B., Friesike, S., 2014. Making Data Sharing in Academia Work, Presented at the International Conference on Infrastructures and Cooperation in e-Science and e-Humanities, Leibniz.
• Benedikt Fecher, Sascha Friesike, Marcel Hebing, Stephanie Linek, Armin Sauermann. “A Reputation Economy: Results from an Empirical Survey on Academic Data Sharing”. DIW Berlin, Discussion Papers, 1454 (2015)
• B. Fecher, S. Friesike, and G. Wagner. A nod to public open access infrastructures. Science 356 (6344): 1242–1242 (2017). https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf6401
• B. Fecher, S. Friesike, M. Hebing, and S. Linek. A reputation economy: how individual reward considerations trump systemic arguments for open access to data. Palgrave Communications (June 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.51
• Linek, S. B., Fecher, B., Friesike, S. & Hebing, M. (2017). Data sharing as social dilemma: influence of the researcher’s personality. PLoS ONE 12(8): e0183216. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183216