New Figshare report provides new insights into the global state of open data

This report has been supported by parent company Digital Science and the survey was conducted in partnership with Springer Nature. It  highlights the extent of awareness around open data, the incentives around its use, and perspectives researchers have about making their own research data open. The key findings of the report include: For the majority of respondents, open data is already a reality: Approximately three quarters of respondents have made their research data openly available at some point; a similar number are aware of data sets that are open to access, reuse, repurpose and redistribute. Researchers in the social sciences demonstrate the highest level of awareness by subject area, while by geography, researchers in Asia demonstrate the least familiarity. Researchers place value on the credit they receive for making data open: Nearly 70% of researchers value as data citation as much as an article citation. A further 10% value a data citation more than an article citation. Awareness of open data transcends age and career progression: Encouragingly, Principal Investigators (PIs) and Professors consistently responded similarly to PhD students and Post-doctoral fellows in their awareness of open data usage. Respondents admit to uncertainty and gaps in their knowledge and are hungry for more information, perhaps one set of critical factors that hold back progression in open data sharing: Of the researchers who have already made their data open, 60% of res...
Source: News from STM - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Digital Featured Source Type: news