Abstract
This work analyses the perception and practice of sharing, reusing, and facilitating access to research data in the field of food science and technology. The study involved the coordination of a focus group discussion and an online survey, to understand and evince the behaviour of researchers regarding data management in that field. Both the discussion group and the survey were performed with researchers from several institutes of the Spanish National Research Council. The lack of a data sharing culture, the fear of being scooped, and confusion between the concepts of the working plan and the data management plan were some of the issues that emerged in the focus group. Respondents' previous experience with sharing their research data has been mainly in the form of appendices to peer‐reviewed publications. From the survey (101 responses), the most important motivations for publishing research data were found to be facilitating the reproducibility of the research, increasing the likelihood of citations of the article, and compliance with funding body mandates. Legal constraints, intellectual property, data ownership, data rights, potential commercial exploitation, and misuse of data were the main barriers to publishing data as open data. Citation in publications, certification, compliance with standards, and the reputation of the data providers were the most relevant factors affecting the use of other researchers' data. Being recent or recently updated, well documented, with quality metadata and ease of access were the most valued attributes of open research data.
Highlights
The term “research data” refers to quantitative or qualitative information collected by researchers in the course of their work, obtained from experimentation, observation, modelling, through surveys or interviews, or by other means, or created from existing data
The lack of a data sharing culture, the fear of being scooped, and confusion between the concepts of the working plan and the data management plan were some of the issues that emerged in the focus group
Each issue is followed by a brief summary based on the group’s comments, and some perceptions from the moderator: Issue 1: Meaning of the terms “data life cycle” and “research data”
Summary
The term “research data” refers to quantitative or qualitative information collected by researchers in the course of their work, obtained from experimentation, observation, modelling, through surveys or interviews, or by other means, or created from existing data. Research data provide the necessary information to support or validate the results or conclusions of the investigation. Their publication and preservation facilitate their reuse, their validation and to support the reproducibility of the research. New systems for recognition, rewarding and evaluation of open research practices should be taken into consideration to change the whole science communication environment. These recognition systems are based mostly on the number and quality of publications and not on the efforts made to be an open scientist
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