Why people do not wish to share data accepting that it may hamper efficient research practices, e.g. those that provide more reliable answers to problems/questions discussed in the scientific community?
Why so many scientists are so stingy with their information?.
Because scientific progress relies so heavily on the process of validating and building upon prior material, it might seem counterproductive to withhold information from other researchers. But even science, a discipline grounded in reason, isn’t immune to the influence of ego and emotion.
The culture of innovation breeds fierce competition, and those on the brink of making a groundbreaking discovery want to be the first to publish their results and receive credit for their ideas. There’s more at stake than just the acknowledgement of being first and a metaphorical blue ribbon; being first to publish can mean invitations to national meetings, academic promotions, industry appointments, and research awards, including the Nobel Prize.
Another study published in Academic Medicine in 2006 found more reasons for scientists’ reluctance to share, including protecting industry relationships or being less familiar with the investigators requesting the data.
These findings show that data withholding isn’t always motivated by vengeance or the desire to get ahead; in some cases, the lack of resources makes it difficult to share it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/scientists-have-a-sharing-problem/383061/
http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(15)00185-8
The recent trend for journals to require open access to primary data included in publications has been embraced by many biologists, but has caused apprehension amongst researchers engaged in long-term ecological and evolutionary studies. A worldwide survey of 73 principal investigators (Pls) with long-term studies revealed positive attitudes towards sharing data with the agreement or involvement of the PI, and 93% of PIs have historically shared data. Only 8% were in favor of uncontrolled, open access to primary data while 63% expressed serious concern. We present here their viewpoint on an issue that can have non-trivial scientific consequences. We discuss potential costs of public data archiving and provide possible solutions to meet the needs of journals and researchers.
Dear Marcel, two main reasons:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682615000577
Some researchers may be apprehensive when questioned about their experimental results. Also, there is a substantial amount of publications in which the experimental procedure section is so ambiguous that you can get any result that you want.
My own guess is the refusal to share other data comes mainly from rather elder scientists. Younger scientists tend to be more open to sharing data. After all data are nearly all around us. I am a glad fun of science data, which allows us to claim that the key aspect consists in the very processing of the date. Of course, I am aware that science data is far from being a paradise.
I think, everything depends on the local circumstances.
In April 2015, the official website of the Russian Social Initiative published a proposal to place the results of the scientific research works (funded by the Russian state), in the public domain and under an open source license (https://www.roi.ru/18915). They even posted on the site this picture (please, see file):
For half a year the authors of this project collected only 1.86% of the required votes. The scientific community in Russia doesn’t hurry up to support them. And I do not think it will change its opinion. Could you guess, what kind of response is the most liked in the public debate on this project?
Well, it is from those scientific data that people get conclusions and make results. Scientists with unpublished data are more concerned about two things, a would be researcher who might use their data and produce publishable results before they do - that is one plausible reason and the other reason is probably the data may not be as strong, well established, true and authentic and it may cause early embarrassment and disqualification before a paper is produced for publication out of it. We have seen cases where false and wrong data are cooked up to publish a highly cited and praised scientific result in medical sciences but later, authors themselves admitted, the data were completely bogus and made and their publications pulled over.
Dear Ivo, I wish you were right. I am on your side. However, old traditions are successful at reproducing themselves. This is what normal science and normal education is all about.
Of course we write about data not under an NDA (non disclosure) agreement, since that is a totally other story...
َSome scientific research works for data collection require costly experiments and so it is very expensive to arrive at such data (e.g., GC-MS systems, ...). Some other works are application specific. In such cases I don't think anyone is willing to share his/her data with others. Beside the mentioned limitations, I think data sharing and collaborative research are possible and may lead to new findings.
I definitely agree with Manuel Alberto M. Ferreira. I think no one is accepted to share his/her data before published the work. After publishing, it will be ready to provide reliable answers.
Much more is known about why researchers do not share data than about why they do share. Among the many reasons for not making data available are the individual investment needed to preserve and manage data in ways that will be understandable and useful to others. This is not to suggest that researchers are selfish, lazy, or greedy. Rather, these findings suggest that despite the current interest in managing, sharing, and reusing research data, the infrastructure. Another explanation for the lack of sharing is the “gift culture” of scholarship. Researchers exchange data, documents, specimens, and other intellectual resources with each other through trusted relationships. Data often are closely held, as they can be bartered for other data or resources. If openly deposited for anyone to use, researchers may lose the ability to barter data privately, thus creating a disincentive for deposite. Source: Wallis JC, Rolando E, Borgman CL (2013) If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them? Data Sharing and Reuse in the Long Tail of Science and Technology. PLoS ONE 8(7): e67332.
Dear Marcel,
A number of researchers have examined this question in other branches of science by doing surveys and case studies of research in practice. This is a quote from a paper by Wallis, Rolando and Borgman (2013), who looked at scientific practices among the Center for Embedded Network Sensing, an interdisciplinary research center funded by NSF.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0067332
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/metascience/open-access/data-sharing-gift-culture-2015.md/
Do scientists and/or data managers truly know how and where data are stored, also given that many data are stored at electronic devices placed outside the laboratory?
Perhaps hiding data is not more than an illusion?
I see how subtle your question is dear Marcel. I agree with the spirit of your question. I firmly believe that data are a common assets nowadays. Having access to them is just a matter of luck, or time - for data are truly available at almost no-cost. That is not the point today any longer. The real issue concerns the processing of the data.
I do not agree that scientific data is not shared. It is shared till the extent it could be shared. Mostly research are funded by organizations (public or privet) not by individuals. Hence data is property of organization and not of individual. Data is shared by two organizations after some formalities. In my opinion here are some reasons, why it is not shared that openly.
1. Generating scientific data is a costly affair, so it is not practical to expect that it will be shared free. It will be used by the fund provider of research for generating some profit so that it may fund more advanced research.
2. Even if paid a research could be used for constructive as well as for destructive work, this moral responsibility is also constrain from sharing.
3. Maximum R&D budget by every country is for defense application. So data becomes of strategic nature and cant be shared.
Why so many scientists are so stingy with their information?.
Because scientific progress relies so heavily on the process of validating and building upon prior material, it might seem counterproductive to withhold information from other researchers. But even science, a discipline grounded in reason, isn’t immune to the influence of ego and emotion.
The culture of innovation breeds fierce competition, and those on the brink of making a groundbreaking discovery want to be the first to publish their results and receive credit for their ideas. There’s more at stake than just the acknowledgement of being first and a metaphorical blue ribbon; being first to publish can mean invitations to national meetings, academic promotions, industry appointments, and research awards, including the Nobel Prize.
Another study published in Academic Medicine in 2006 found more reasons for scientists’ reluctance to share, including protecting industry relationships or being less familiar with the investigators requesting the data.
These findings show that data withholding isn’t always motivated by vengeance or the desire to get ahead; in some cases, the lack of resources makes it difficult to share it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/scientists-have-a-sharing-problem/383061/
It depends on the circumstances. Sometimes, the scientific data collected from research are very sensitive so these become "classified" information. Sometimes, a researcher works in a company, which finances the research, so the manager asks for secrecy in order to win in competition. A researcher will opt for hiding research details when there is preparation for a patent . Also, a researcher may just postpone announcing research results until s/he gets out from a place in which s/he was subjected to injustice & bad treatment for many years. Generally speaking, there will be more generosity in revealing & sharing of knowledge when the "free" scientist judges that an innovation or a discovery will be rightfully attributed to him/her as an intellectual property.
@Ezequiel: It goes back to philosophic attitudes towards Life itself: cooperation vs. competition. According to their beliefs, so will people decide what to do. Scientists are no exception.
I presume the impact of personality profiles is important in willingness to share or not to share?
Just by changing the person(s) in charge of the data can accelerate or hamper data exchange, independent of the research environment?
I agree dear Marcel,
Willing to share is depends on personality profiles among other factors.
I have seen cases in my field that researchers share the data (in UCI) a few years after publishing their articles. Their citations go much higher after sharing. They help to promote the science and get citations and reputations in return among other things (see the link please, the original article is cited 377 times already!)
Yeh, I. C. (1998). Modeling of strength of high-performance concrete using artificial neural networks. Cement and Concrete research, 28(12), 1797-1808.
UCI machine learning repository provides the opportunity to share data sets for machine learning and data mining.
https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Concrete+Compressive+Strength
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=eng+Yeh%2C+"Modeling+of+strength+of+high+performance+concrete+using+artificial+neural+networks%2C"+Cement+and+Concrete+Research%2C+Vol.+28%2C+No.+12%2C+pp.+1797-1808+&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=
Perhaps an interesting additional related question might be: Why people refuse to receive information from others? Why people ignore information from others?
Usually, I am vary happy to share the resuts of my researchs. Of course, after a validation by a peer review.
Reasons: why researchers are hesitate to share the data:
Please see the attached infographic (from Wiley based on 2250 responses).
http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/2014/11/03/how-and-why-researchers-share-data-and-why-they-dont/
Dear Marcel,
I do not understand your question. When discussing with colleagues – I mean researchers working on similar subjects – I used to share my ideas and results in telling and writing but I do not use to send them my accurate records. Some reciprocate this some not. However, there is some reservation and the clear and honest professional discussions are lacking where I work and the country where I live. There is a colleague who stole not only my idea but also some of my published data some years ago. Also his boss learned it but this behaviour was but a bagatelle for him. I have often identified others’ collected insects but I have never had the idea to misappropriate them.
Dear Marcel,
Your view is logical but to find a working solution is not as easy as from your sentence can be deduced.
here ill not generalise but it is the human nature, that restricts you to share the knowledge weather fully or partially.
as today's world is materialistic the most of the research is oriented around the money money and money. i have many examples of researchers that they are not willing to disseminate the information, cause most of there data is Manipulated, so they afraid to do so.
Researchers are custom to share their results through publications, conferences talks and meeting with peers. However the records or data used in or basis of their research are not custom to be shared. Usually people focus on the methods, theories and the scientific objectivity of the results. However job places are assumed to be serious as funds for researches are not allowed easily, budget and sponsors are meticulous when they should give money, so data could be shared in cooperative forms between labs or job places. Unfortunately in some job places not close to standards, data could be stolen or destroyed. Sometimes computers could move from a researcher's desk to another without any objective task and people couldn't be able to claim their data for validations or publications or even as their own works for their career advance
Scientific Data Sharing and Re-use
Research data are essential to all scientific endeavours. Openness in the sharing of research results is one of the norms of modern science. The assumption behind this openness is that scientific progress requires results to be shared within the scientific community as early as possible in the discovery process.
The main technological impediments to data sharing/reuse are:
- Heterogeneity of Data Representations: There are a wide variety of scientific data models and formats and scientific information expressed in one formalism cannot directly be incorporated into another formalism.
- Heterogeneity of Query Languages: Data collections are managed by a variety of systems that support different query languages.
- Discoverability of data: In a networked scientific multidisciplinary environment pinpointing the location of relevant data is a big challenge for researchers.
- Understandability of data: The next problem regards the capacity of the data user to understand the information/knowledge embodied in it.
- Movement of data: Data users and data collections inhabit multiple contexts. The intended meaning becomes distorted when the data move across semantic boundaries. This is due to the loss of the interpretative context and can lead to a phenomenon called “ontological drift”. This risk arises when a shared vocabulary and domain terminology are lacking.
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en100/special/scientific-data-sharing-and-re-use-introduction-to-the-special-theme
Dear Behrouz,
I don't think this should be a problem for people that work on the same model species/system for 10 or more years?
The scientific data are scientific secrets, such as industrial secrets. For many researchers equals money!
The debate on Open Data (please see the links for further info)
Arguments made on behalf of Open Data include the following:
• "Data belong to the human race". Typical examples are genomes, data on organisms, medical science, environmental data following the Aarhus Convention
• Public money was used to fund the work and so it should be universally available.
Arguments against making all data available as Open Data include the following:
Privacy concerns may require that access to data is limited to specific users or to sub-sets of the data.
Sponsors do not get full value unless their data is used appropriately - sometimes this requires quality management, dissemination and branding efforts that can best be achieved by charging fees to users.i
http://usodi.org/blog/
https://learn.canvas.net/courses/4/pages/open-data-in-more-detail
Open Data in More Detail: Introduction to Openness in Education
http://localdata.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk/?page_id=30
Arguments for open local data « Open Local Data BlogSupporting critically the release of local public data
People do not want to share scientific data because they have done hard work to gather data and they want to use it for their future publications.
I do not like to share the data which is very important for my future research. However, I always like share the data/codes which may be important to me but may be very important to new researcher in that area. Also, I think that such things will really benefit those novice as they need such information.
I think that such information sharing may be very beneficial to the scientific community and everyone should do it.
I like to share data
.... and the driver is getting answers to questions.... that sometimes have been asked many years ago....
I wonder about the scooping argument. It is always mentioned but real examples are very hard to come by. Actually I am collecting evidence/stories on that. If your have real examples of scooping please share them at https://www.researchgate.net/post/Have_you_been_scooped_because_of_data_sharing_or_preprint_sharing
I think that egoistic interests play substantial role in research. Some researchers want to minimize their work and to maximize benefits. This may mean to split a article into 3, to use the same data for 3 papers, etc. In order to avoid spillover of other researchers, they may keep these data in secret to write all what they can do. When they finish, they would rather pass them to their PhD student and not make it public.
Contrary to that, discussions on Q&A in RG provide many example when people make all public, without any concern that somebody will steal their ideas (and data). They may be altruistic and think more about social benefits for global science rather than about their private benefits.
Science practice without frontiers
Science-based decision-making: Investing in publications versus investing in people?
Science-based decision-making: If unpublished results can improve advice to authors that submitted a manuscript for publication, should these unpublished results or interpretations of these unpublishes results be indicated in the referee reports to improve advice?
Thank you!
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