Abstract
Open access to research data has been described as a driver of innovation and a potential cure for the reproducibility crisis in many academic fields. Against this backdrop, policy makers are increasingly advocating for making research data and supporting material openly available online. Despite its potential to further scientific progress, widespread data sharing in small science is still an ideal practised in moderation. In this article, we explore the question of what drives open access to research data using a survey among 1564 mainly German researchers across all disciplines. We show that, regardless of their disciplinary background, researchers recognize the benefits of open access to research data for both their own research and scientific progress as a whole. Nonetheless, most researchers share their data only selectively. We show that individual reward considerations conflict with widespread data sharing. Based on our results, we present policy implications that are in line with both individual reward considerations and scientific progress.
Highlights
Merton formulated his four norms that comprise the ethos of ethical science, he probably did not think of researchers archiving their data in a public repository
Open access to research data is a translation of the Mertonian norms for an ethical and democratic science to the digital age and a potential cure for the replication crisis we currently see in many scientific disciplines (McNutt, 2014a, 2016; Maxwell et al, 2015)
What is the researchers’ general opinion on open access to data? Despite the fact that open access to research data is widely considered a way of fostering scientific progress and it is promoted by science policy makers, few researchers make their data publicly available
Summary
Well-documented and openly available datasets allow organized skepticism by enabling the replicability of research (Leonhart and Maurischat, 2004; Evans, 2010; Klein et al, 2013; McNutt, 2014a; Fecher et al, 2016) In this regard, open access to research data is a translation of the Mertonian norms for an ethical and democratic science to the digital age and a potential cure for the replication crisis we currently see in many scientific disciplines (McNutt, 2014a, 2016; Maxwell et al, 2015). It is for these reasons that open access to research data is currently mandated by prominent funding agencies and science policy makers (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development., 2007; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 2012)
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