Factors influencing the data sharing behavior of researchers in sociology and political science

Published date10 September 2018
Pages1053-1073
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JD-09-2017-0126
Date10 September 2018
AuthorWolfgang Zenk-Möltgen,Esra Akdeniz,Alexia Katsanidou,Verena Naßhoven,Ebru Balaban
Subject MatterLibrary & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet
Factors influencing the data
sharing behavior of researchers in
sociology and political science
Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen, Esra Akdeniz, Alexia Katsanidou and
Verena Naßhoven
Data Archive for the Social Sciences,
GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne, Germany, and
Ebru Balaban
Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, Bamberg, Germany
Abstract
Purpose Open data and data sharing should improve transparency of research. The purpose of this paper
is to investigate how different institutional and individual factors affect the data sharing behavior of authors
of research articles in sociology and political science.
Design/methodology/approach Desktop research analyzed attributes of sociology and political
science journals (n¼262) from their websites. A second data set of articles (n¼1,011; published 2012-2014)
was derived from ten of the main journals (five from each discipline) and stated data sharing was
examined. A survey of the authors used the Theory of Planned Behavior to examine motivations,
behavioral control, and perceived norms for sharing data. Statistical tests (Spearmansρ,χ
2
) examined
correlations and associations.
Findings Although many journ als have a data policy for their authors (78 percent in sociology,
44 percent in political science), only around half of the empirical articles stated that the data were
available, and for only 37 percent of the articles could the data be accessed. Journals with higher impact
factors, those with a s tated data policy, and younger journals were more likely to offer data availabil ity.
Of the authors surveyed, 446 responded (44 percent). Statistical analysis indicated that authorsattitudes,
reported past behavior, social norms, and perceived behavioral control affected their intentions to
share data.
Research limitations/implications Less than 50 percent of the authors contacted provided responses to
the survey. Results indicate that data sharing would improve if journals had explicit data sharing policies but
authors also need support from other institutions (their universities, funding councils, and professional
associations) to improve data management skills and infrastructures.
Originality/value This paper builds on previous similar research in sociology and political science and
explains some of the barriers to data sharing in social sciences by combining journal policies, published
articles, and authorsresponses to a survey.
Keywords Sociology, Theory of Planned Behaviour, Political science, Replication, Data sharing,
Research data management, Data availability, Data policy, Research transparency
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Research data are a new currency in science. In recent years, more and more recommendations
have been published on the citing of research data sets and the principal investigators
responsibility when creating data. Examples of discipline-independent recommendations on
data sharing have been published by DataCite, the Research Data A lliance, the FORCE11
initiative, and the OECD (Brase et al. ,2015; Rau beret al. , 2015; Berman et al., 2014;Data Ci tation
Synthesis Group, 2014; OECD, 2013), and more specifically for the social sciences by the
International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology and the
German Data Forum (IASSIST SIGDC, 2012; Rat für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten, 2016).
Open science strategies are being adopted by policy makers and research institutions.
They are increasingly supporting the idea of open access not only to published materials but
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 74 No. 5, 2018
pp. 1053-1073
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-09-2017-0126
Received 8 September 2017
Revised 4 April 2018
Accepted 3 May 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
1053
Factors
influencing the
data sharing
behavior
also to open research data and open code. The scientific potential of open data is enormous in
terms of the replication of research results (King, 2006, p. 120; Agosti et al., 2017), the
re-purposing of old data (Moss et al., 2015), and the increase of effectiveness, productivi ty,an d
reproducibility(Gregory et al., 2018, p. 1) for science. In addition, the promise of open data is to
allow better cooperation across academia, government, and the private sector (Groves, 2018).
Academic journals are one of the driving forces of science. They act as gatekeepers for
the quality and form of scientific publications. In recent years, academic journals in various
disciplines have started adopting data sharing policies to promote transparency and
replication. For that, access to empirical data and their documentation is necessary to enable
progress based on existing knowledge. In reality, replication often suffers from a lack of
data availability and poor or even non-existent documentation (Dewald et al., 1986; Abrams
et al., 2014; Tenopir et al., 2011).
While data and data sharing play an increasingly important role in empirical research,
this is still not fully appreciated by researchers across all disciplines. The study by Kim and
Zhang (2015) investigated data sharing decisions in relation to motivation, attitudes,
perceived norms, and controls in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering,
and mathematics). It reveals the significant effects of attitudinal beliefs (perceived career
benefit/risk, perceived effort) on STEM researchersdata sharing behavior. The most
important factors determining data sharing by researchers have also been found to lie in
academic rewards (Kling and Spector, 2002) and recognition (Altman, 2016; Kankanhalli
et al., 2005). This leads to inter-disciplinary efforts to create incentives for data sharing like
Altmetrics (Piwowar, 2013) or the DataCite efforts to link data set authors with publications
(Mongeon et al., 2017). Further factors influencing data sharing behavior of researchers are
potential risks including concerns about losing publication opportunities, necessary effort
(Kim and Stanton, 2012; Tenopir et al., 2011; Savage and Vickers, 2009) as well as
demographic factors (Enke et al., 2012).
Tenopir et al. (2011) showed in their inter-disciplinary study that even though scientists agree
that the lack of data sharing is a major impediment to progress in science (60 percent), they do
not make their data electronically available to others (46 percent). Specifically for disciplines like
health research or social sciences, privacy requirements are an additional impediment for data
sharing. A major dilemma is that while scientific disciplines as a whole benefit if data are made
available as a public good, sharing data entails significant disadvantages for individ ual
researchers. The hypothesized reason for researchers not sharing their data is that their efforts
and perceived risks outweigh the potential individual benefits they expect from data sharing
(Fecher et al., 2015, p. 19). Other publications investigating reasons for not sharing hint at the
perceived ownership of data by the primary investigators, a need for control but also a
significant time and resources problem when it comes to data management (Fecher et al., 2015;
Gherghina and Katsanidou, 2013; Zenk-Möltgen and Lepthien, 2014b).
Data sharing seems to be based on altruism, incentives, and the availability of supportive
structures (Horton and Katsanidou, 2011). High-quality data management and
documentation have also been shown to result in better quality research and more
transparent research sections (Katsanidou et al., 2016). Based on these findings the current
investigation seeks to gain a better understanding of what drives data sharing, examining
institutional factors (analysis of journal data policies and published articles) and individual
factors (survey among authors of articles) in the fields of sociology and political science.
Previous research
This current paper on data sharing is a continuation of two previous studies which
investigated the impact of journal policies on authorsdata sharing behavior for sociology
and political science separately (Zenk-Möltgen and Lepthien, 2014b; Gherghina and
Katsanidou, 2013). The data of these previous studies (Zenk-Möltgen and Lepthien, 2014a;
1054
JD
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