Abstract
In recent years, the promotion of data sharing has come with the recognition that not all scientists around the world are equally placed to partake in such activities. Notably, those within developing countries are sometimes regarded as experiencing hardware infrastructure challenges and data management skill shortages. Proposed remedies often focus on the provision of information and communication technology as well as enhanced data management training. Building on prior empirical social research undertaken in sub-Sahara Africa, this article provides a complementary but alternative proposal; namely, fostering data openness by enabling research. Towards this end, the underlying rationale is outlined for a ‘bottom-up’ system of research support that addresses the day-to-day demands in low-resourced environments. This approach draws on lessons from development financial assistance programs in recent decades. In doing so, this article provides an initial framework for science funding that call for holding together concerns for ensuring research can be undertaken in low-resourced laboratory environments with concerns about the data generated in such settings can be shared.
Highlights
The 2015 publication Open Data in a Big World: An International Accord produced by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP), the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) offers a recent high level statement on the potential of making research data widely available
Despite the demands of and cautions with open data, when the revolutionizing benefits were considered against potential downsides, the conclusion reached by ICSU, IAP, TWAS and ISSC was clear: openness should be the default position for publicly funded research
I want to attend to what can be done to promote world-wide openness with data; with particular emphasis on those working in comparatively low-resourced research environments in Africa
Summary
The promotion of data sharing has come with the recognition that not all scientists around the world are placed to partake in such activities. I want to recount one of the central recurring themes of the interviews: namely the day-to-day difficulties of doing research that shaped what science could be done; frustrated interviewees’ ability to collect, analyse, publish, assess and reuse data; and downgraded the self-relevance they perceived in calls for data openness These day-to-day demands included (Bezuidenhout et al 2017: 4):. To them as individuals they found little merit in making their result freely available beyond known and trusted peers (see Rappert and Bezuidenhout 2017 for a detailed discussion) Interviewees accounted for their lack of involvement in sharing data by citing various considerations related to the day-to-day demands noted above. The fear that those in developing countries might have their data scooped by their better supported peers elsewhere has been frequently voiced in relation to the comparatively well examined areas of clinical and public health research (Pisani and Abou-Zahr 2010; Tindana 2014; Bull et al 2015)
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