The FireOak team keeps an eye out for and shares the most interesting articles, reports, and case studies related to managing, sharing, and securing information, data, and knowledge. Here are some snippets from what we’re reading right now. For this week, our read examines the data publishing and data sharing practices of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council (EVOSTC).
A Funder-Imposed Data Publication Requirement Seldom Inspired Data Sharing (PLoS ONE)
This is a really interesting article examining data publishing over time related to outputs of projects funded by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council (EVOSTC). If this subject interests you we encourage you to read the article in full. The citation, with clickable link, follows the key points.
Key points:
- Overall the majority of data were not recovered (26% recovery of 315 data projects), a similar result to journal-driven efforts to recover data. Projects completed after a formal data policy was imposed (data from 1995–2010) had a slightly decreased recovery rate of 24% compared to the overall effort.
- The presence of formal language requiring data availability decreased successful recovery. (!)
- A culture and longstanding history of data/knowledge sharing helps: “The research fields of oil, physical oceanography, plankton, and benthic invertebrates were more likely to share data than other fields”, and this may be attributable to a culture of sharing that have better streamlined processes in place, or have established methods less open to interpretation. Or, in the case of oil, there was one agency collecting data sets, and that may have been legally mandated.
- There are no rewards for sharing data, and once funding is granted and papers published, sharing requirements are not enforced.
Citation:
Couture JL, Blake RE, McDonald G, Ward CL (2018) A funder-imposed data publication requirement seldom inspired data sharing. PLoS ONE 13(7): e0199789. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199789
