Incentivising Open Research
In addition to a keynote and lightning talks, the recent UoE Open Knowledge Network event hosted a series of parallel discussion sessions focused on open educational resources, the interface between unrestricted and open data and incentivising the sharing of research data. This latter session, led by Pauline Ward of the Data Library, identified a number of key points to address and potential actions to take forward.
Key Points
Greater sharing of research data can happen through:
- Financial incentives.
- Culture shift to ‘open by default’.
- Leading by example e.g. raise awareness of clinical anonymised data already in DataShare.
- Encouraging all researchers to put their own data on wikidata. Raising awareness of Wikidata’s potential for data linkage and visualisation, reputational gain, powerful analytics, citation impact.
- Clarity asap from HEFCE on how impact (from data in particular) will be defined and measured in the next REF.
- New research to demonstrate increased citation impact from sharing data.
Actions
1. Formulate an offer of training on DataShare and Wikidata as an incentive for a volunteer researcher to become a Data Champion (for the Centre for Cardiovascular Sciences, after the Data Safe Haven becomes available this Summer).
2. Ensure clear guidance is available to researchers on how to mitigate the risk of infringing the General Data Protection Regulation, which will come into force in 2018. (There has been concern the stringent penalties may be deterring data sharing.)
We’d welcome thoughts and comments on these points and actions, so please let us know what you think.
