Springer Nature published the white paper Practical challenges for researchers in data sharing on 21 March 2018.
Based one of the largest surveys of researchers about research data, this report finds widespread data sharing associated with published works and a desire from researchers that their data are discoverable. The survey results confirm and extend recent findings on general data sharing attitudes and behaviour, including those published in the 2017 The State of Open Data Report from Digital Science, to which Springer Nature contributed. The report also reinforces previous findings on the challenges faced by researchers in sharing their data. In addition the report finds that a high proportion of researchers share their date in some way during the publication process; that a majority of researchers highly rate the importance of their data being discoverable; and that the size of datasets impacts how likely they are to be shared.
The volume of respondents to the survey (over 7,700 researchers responded) enables this report to explore data sharing behaviours and challenges from global, regional, subject-specific and seniority perspectives.
