The formation of research ethics for data sharing by biological scientists: an empirical analysis
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-12-2018-0296 |
| Published date | 16 September 2019 |
| Pages | 583-600 |
| Date | 16 September 2019 |
| Author | Boryung Ju,Youngseek Kim |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
The formation of research ethics
for data sharing by biological
scientists: an empirical analysis
Boryung Ju
School of Library and Information Science,
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA, and
Youngseek Kim
School of Information Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate how biological scientists form research ethics for data
sharing, and what the major factors affecting biological scientists’formation of research ethics for data
sharing are.
Design/methodology/approach –A research model for data sharing was developed based on the
consequential theorists’perspective of ethics. An online survey of 577 participants was administered,and the
proposed research model was validated with a structural equation modeling technique.
Findings –The results show that egoism factors (perceived reputation, perceived risk, perceived effort),
utilitarianism factors (perceived community benefit and perceived reciprocity) and norm of practice factors
(perceived pressure by funding agency, perceived pressure by journal and norm of data sharing) all
contribute to the formation of research ethics for data sharing.
Research limitations/implications –This research employed the consequentialist perspective of ethics
for its research model development, and the proposed research model nicely explained how egoism,
utilitarianism and norm of practice factors influence biological scientists’research ethics for data sharing,
which eventually leads to their data sharing intentions.
Practical implications –This research provides important practical implications for examining scientists’
data sharing behaviors from the perspective of research ethics. This research suggests that scientists’data
sharing behaviors can be better facilitated by emphasizing their egoism, utilitarianism and normative factors
involved in research ethics for data sharing.
Originality/value –The ethical perspectives in data sharing research has been under-studied; this research
sheds light on biological scientists’formation of research ethics for data sharing, which can be applied in
promoting scientists’data sharing behaviors across different disciplines.
Keywords Utilitarianism, Research ethics, Data sharing, Consequentialist perspective of ethics, Egoism,
Practice norm, Biological sciences
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Researchers in science fields encounter challenges and opportunities to share and reuse
research data that have beencollected and deposited by other scientists. With the fast-paced
developmentof technology to effectively process the large quantitiesof data and the growing
complexity of research problems, researchers in the science fields are discovering that these
challenges have only grown. Previously scientists had shared data through informal
communication channels such as e-mail and web file sharing; however, they can now share
data through formal communication channels such as disciplinary and/or institutional data
repositories. With more data accessible to researchers through research data centers and
institutional repositories on the web, data sharing has become one of the crucial aspects in
recent scientificresearch activities. In this research, datasharing is defined as providing raw Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 71 No. 5, 2019
pp. 583-600
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-12-2018-0296
Received 12 December 2018
Revised 21 March 2019
23 May 2019
Accepted 5 June 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
Both survey data and instrument have been made publicly available via Open ICPSR (Inter-university
Consortium for Political and Social Research) and can be accessed at (www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/
project/105060/view).
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Biological
scientists
data to other scientists when scientistsare expected to provide their data by depositing it into
data repositories, or by sending it via personal communication methods upon request.
Sharing scientific data among researchers has been encouraged for a variety of reasons
and practiced in several dimensions. Data sharing helps to promote innovation and potential
new uses of data, reduces the cost of duplicating data collection, maximizes transparency
and accountability of research, and provides quality assurance (Allison and Cooper, 1992;
Van den Eynden et al., 2011). Several studies point out that, in the actual practice of data
sharing in different scientific fields, the publication-related data and materials are not
always available for other researchers. Due to the diverse nature of data types and sizes, and
the culture of each discipline, the perceptions and approaches toward data sharing may
vary according to the research environment. For example, researchers in the social sciences
do not participate as widely in sharing research data (Kim and Adler, 2015; King, 1995;
Fienberg, 1994), unlike those in the hard sciences, such as biology, who take sharing
research data as a common practice (Rung and Brazma, 2013).
The literature reports a substantial variation in scientific data sharing across disciplinary
practices in science. In the big science fields, such as physics or astronomy, researchers accept
data sharing as the standard practice. Researchers in small science fields, such as plant science
or ocean science, tend to depend on personal communication, professional relationships or rely
on university libraries or institutional repositories to engage in data sharing practices (Carlson,
2006; Cragin et al., 2010). Even the big science fields, such as the closely related subfields like
medical genetics and evolutionary genetics, can experience substantially different data sharing
rates among researchers. Medical and biological sciences have an overall low data sharing
culture (Fecher et al., 2015; Milia et al.,2012).Fecheret al.’s (2015) study indicates a substantial
variation in data sharing rates of primary data sets across distinct research fields. For example,
data in medical genetics show low rates of data sharing when compared to human evolution
genetics, and only 15 percent of data sharing was conducted for the highly informative data sets
of the mitochondrial area (complete DNA sequences) (Milia et al., 2012).
In the context of modern science, data sharing can be considered not an arbitrary
decision, but part of an individual researcher’s motivation. We assume that scientists’
motivations in data sharing are closely related to their research ethics toward data sharing,
and this research focuses on scientists’data sharing behaviors in the perspective of ethical
decision making. This research examines how scientists’research ethics for data sharing
affect their data sharing intentions, and what factors contribute to the formation of research
ethics for data sharing. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to empirically
examine which factors form biological scientists’research ethics toward data sharing, and
to what extent those ethics influence a biological scientist’s data sharing intentions. The
approach we adopted would distinguish our work from the existing data sharing-related
studies that examine various motivating factors underlying data sharing, except ours also
includes ethical aspects.
2. Literature review
Scientific data sharing varies across different disciplines because of disciplinary cultures,
institutional settings and human/technological supports (Tenopir et al., 2015; Kim and
Stanton, 2012; Tenopir et al., 2011). Kim and Stanton (2016) argued that scientists’data
sharing factors differ across disciplines because each discipline has their own practice of
data sharing based on their institutional contexts and individual scientists’motivations. In
order to better understand biological scientists’data sharing behaviors and their influencing
factors, we have reviewed diverse data sharing factors studied within Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines in general. Scholars have investigated the
diverse factors affecting scientists’data sharing behaviors in STEM disciplines, and those
factors can be categorized into institutional pressure and individual motivation factors.
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