The challenges to Open Research Data

Author
Prof. Sabine Gless
University of Basel

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Data sharing is at the heart of future research. Therefore, initiatives promote open data. But reality often looks different. How can this be made better? The cross-cutting activity “Big Data: Open Data and Legal Strings” within NRP 75 took care of it.

Sharing results and data can make research cheaper and more efficient. Data can be reused and combined, while new studies can learn from the body of scientific results. Sharing increases productivity because it reduces the time needed to collect data, while stimulating creativity by enabling low-cost and innovative experiments. It also broadens access to research results, including to people outside academia. In reality, however, research data is often inaccessible and underused. Scientists wanting to share their data still face many practical, institutional and financial hurdles. NRP 75 addressed these issues with the cross-cutting activity Big Data: Open Data and Legal Strings. It looked at the concrete challenges facing researchers when sharing, publishing and reusing data. It conducted interviews, formulated clear recommendations for research institutions and proposed concrete advice in the form of a How-to Guide.

The main challenges faced by researchers

  • Practical and legal hurdles hinder access to existing research data: data quality, outdated formats, identification of sources, diverse storage locations, inaccessible repositories, outdated websites, data’s legal status and restrictions on re-use, data protection laws, infringement of others’ rights, etc.
  • Researchers also face organisational, financial and legal hurdles in publishing research data: lack of incentives, costs, technical and legal know-how, long-term commitment, risk of being scooped by other scientists, risk of data misuse by external partners.
  • Lack of standardisation of research data limits the potential for reuse.

Solution avenues

  • Legal advice: data ownership, intellectual property and copyright law, contractual agreements with third parties, and data protection law.
  • Standardisation: data formats, storage, anonymisation processes, regulatory procedures.
  • Identification and publication of best practices and of a How-To-Guide.
  • Financial and reputational incentives for sharing.

About the project

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