Researcher attitudes toward data sharing in public data repositories: a meta-evaluation of studies on researcher data sharing
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2021-0015 |
| Published date | 31 May 2021 |
| Date | 31 May 2021 |
| Pages | 1-17 |
| Subject Matter | Library & 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 |
| Author | Jennifer L. Thoegersen,Pia Borlund |
Researcher attitudes toward data
sharing in public data repositories:
a meta-evaluation of studies on
researcher data sharing
Jennifer L. Thoegersen and Pia Borlund
Department of Archivistics, Library and Information Science,
Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to report a study of how research literature addresses researchers’
attitudes toward data repository use. In particular, the authors are interested in how the term data sharing is
defined, how data repository use is reported and whether there is need for greater clarity and specificity of
terminology.
Design/methodology/approach –To study how the literature addresses researcher data repository use,
relevant studies were identified by searching Library Information Science and Technology Abstracts, Library
and Information Science Source, Thomas Reuters’Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus. A total of 62
studies were identified for inclusion in this meta-evaluation.
Findings –The study shows a need for greater clarity and consistency in the use of the term data sharing in
future studiesto betterunderstand the phenomenon and allow for cross-study comparisons. Furthermore, most
studies did not address data repository use specifically. In most analyzed studies, it was not possible to
segregate results relating to sharing via public data repositories from other types of sharing. When sharing in
public repositories was mentioned, the prevalence of repository use varied significantly.
Originality/value –Researchers’data sharing is of great interest to libraryand information science research
and practice to inform academic libraries that are implementing data services to support these researchers.
This study explores how the literature approaches this issue, especially the use of data repositories, the use of
which is strongly encouraged. This paper identifies the potential for additional study focused on this area.
Keywords Research, Data management, Data, Data sharing
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
This study examines how researcher data sharing has been studied in the research literature.
Over the past decade, there has been an increasing, international demand to make the data
underlying research more available to the research community and the public. Pressure to
share data has been placed on researchers by funding institutions and journal publishers,
many of which have begun to encourage or require researchers to share data
(MacMillan, 2014, p. 544). The reasons for this shift in expectations are varied, but
Borgman (2012) presents four broad rationales for sharing research data: reproducibility,
serving the public interest, asking new questions and advancing research (p. 1067).
Attitudes
toward data
sharing
1
Jennifer L. Thoegersen and Pia Borlund. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is
published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce,
distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial
purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence
may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
The authors thank Lisa Federer, Erica DeFrain and Rasmus Thøgersen for providing valuable
feedback on various drafts of this article. In addition, they thank the anonymous reviewers whose
comments helped improve and clarify this manuscript.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 20 January 2021
Revised 16 March 2021
Accepted 19 March 2021
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 7, 2022
pp. 1-17
Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-01-2021-0015
However, there is not one single definition of data sharing. In an open science context,
which emphasizes the importance of publicly sharing scientific knowledge as soon as
practicable, data sharing is framed as research data being made publicly available with as
few restrictions on reuse as possible and referred to as Open Data (Nielsen, 2011; para. 2;
Open Knowledge Foundation, 2014). The FAIR Guiding Principles take data sharing a step
further, focusing not just on public accessibility, but also on utility, encouraging researchers
to make data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (Wilkinson et al., 2016, p. 3).
Adhering to these expectations presents challenges for researchers, including a lack of
resources, the need for data management skills and time constraints (Sayogo and Pardo, 2013,
p. S25). Complicating the issue further are the plethora of ways researchers can share data.
They must decide how and where they will share their data; data dissemination methods
include departmental and researcher websites, by request, cloud services, publications and
data journals (Bishoff and Johnston, 2015, p. 11; Mischo and O’Donnell, 2014, p. 35). Funding
agencies and journal publishers, as well as the open science and FAIR data movements,
generally encourage the use of public data repositories (which Uzwyshyn (2016, p. 18) defines
as “large database infrastructures set up to manage, share, access, and archive researchers’
datasets”) when practicable and possible from a legal and ethical standpoint (Holdren, 2013,
p. 5).
Academic libraries have taken a leading role in supporting and shaping campus and
national research data management and sharing (Christensen-Dalsgaard et al., 2012).
As academic libraries have taken on this mantle, Library and Information Science (LIS)
research has begun to investigate data sharing prevalence among researchers and the factors
influencing researcher data sharing. However, most studies are not focused specifically on
the use of public data repositories, and there is no comprehensive look at researcher attitudes
toward these repositories.
There are two recent reviews of data sharing literature. Examining the concept
through three lenses (individual, institutional, international), Chawinga and Zinn’s (2019)
systematic literature review highlights existing barriers to data sharing and provides
suggestions for overcoming these barriers. Alternatively, Perrier et al.’s (2020,p.14)meta-
synthesis of qualitative studies examines researchers’views on data sharing broadly and
explores the disconnect between data sharing requirements and the still low level of
sharing among researchers. Both studies focus specifically on “open data,”arguing for
the importance of publicly available of data, with Chawinga and Zinn (2019) stating that
the terms “data sharing”and “open data”are synonymous and defining data sharing as “a
deliberate effort to make all raw research data fully available for public access”(p. 110).
The current study, which evaluates both qualitative and quantitative studies, also focuses
on the public availability of data, though concentrating specifically on the use of public data
repositories. However, in contrast to the previous reviews, this study begins with questioning
how the literature uses the term “data sharing,”acknowledging the term’s inherent ambiguity
and explores how research on data sharing is being conducted across a variety of disciplines.
The overall objectives of this study are to identify how the term “data sharing”is
defined and operationalized in the literature, how sharing data in public data repositories
is addressed and how researchers’attitudes toward data sharing relate to their data
sharing behavior.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 explains the
methodology for identifying studies to include in the analysis. Section 3 presents the
results of the study relating to how previous studies have addressed research data
sharing and the use of data repositories. Section 4 discusses the results. Finally, Section 5
provides concluding remarks.
JD
78,7
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