Abstract
Research on practices to share and reuse data will inform the design of infrastructure to support data collection, management, and discovery in the long tail of science and technology. These are research domains in which data tend to be local in character, minimally structured, and minimally documented. We report on a ten-year study of the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. We found that CENS researchers are willing to share their data, but few are asked to do so, and in only a few domain areas do their funders or journals require them to deposit data. Few repositories exist to accept data in CENS research areas.. Data sharing tends to occur only through interpersonal exchanges. CENS researchers obtain data from repositories, and occasionally from registries and individuals, to provide context, calibration, or other forms of background for their studies. Neither CENS researchers nor those who request access to CENS data appear to use external data for primary research questions or for replication of studies. CENS researchers are willing to share data if they receive credit and retain first rights to publish their results. Practices of releasing, sharing, and reusing of data in CENS reaffirm the gift culture of scholarship, in which goods are bartered between trusted colleagues rather than treated as commodities.
Highlights
IntroductionTools, and communications, research data have become far easier to collect, save, manage, distribute, and reuse
With improvements in technology, tools, and communications, research data have become far easier to collect, save, manage, distribute, and reuse
In this article we explore data sharing practices among scientists and technology researchers in a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center
Summary
Tools, and communications, research data have become far easier to collect, save, manage, distribute, and reuse. Funding agencies, policy makers, research institutions, and journals are encouraging researchers to release their data. Deposit requirements, linking of journal articles to the data reported in them, and development of community-specific data sharing policies all are part of this trend. Policies that require or encourage the release of data are predicated on the assumption that those data are useful to others [2]. Little is known about how researchers manage their data, or about when, how, or whether researchers will share their data. Even less is known about when, how, and whether researchers use data they have not collected themselves
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