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Funding agencies and publishers requiring the sharing and publishing of data after the completion of a study has become more and more common in recent years. Making data available enables researchers to access, use, and build upon experimental results, thus improving and expediting the research process. Sharing and publishing data supports transparency and reproducibility of research and just makes for better science.
Being open and honest about research data and the research process adds validity to your work. Transparency is at the core of ethical research practice. Being transparent allows for protocols to be evaluated and scrutinized, enables readers to dig deeper into the research and methodology, and it helps establish trust in the research process and results.
Comprehensive research requires collaboration among multiple disciplines and researchers with varying skillsets. Additionally, sharing data lets researchers outside your field find your data and could spark collaborative projects and lead to innovative solutions to novel problems.
When you share data in a reputable repository, it is issued a persistent identifier such as a DOI or PID and a formal citation is created. These formal citations are used by colleagues when they use your data, thus increasing your number of citations.
When working with human subjects, thought and consideration needs to be given to the language of informed consent, particularly around how their data will be shared and how they will be informed of the sharing practices.
The ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) is an international consortium of nearly 800 institutions. They have made recommendations for informed consent language:
Promises in the informed consent can appear to limit an investigator's ability to share data with the research community. In reality, investigators can inform study participants that they are scientists with an obligation to protect confidentiality and still share the study data with the broad scientific community. Many effective means exist to create public-use data files or share restricted-use data files under controlled conditions. That is, data can be modified to reduce the risk of disclosure or shared with additional safeguards while preserving their value for science.
Here are two model statements investigators may use in informed consents to describe protection of confidentiality that also allows data sharing.
Sample 1. Study staff will protect your personal information closely so no one will be able to connect your responses and any other information that identifies you. Federal or state laws may require us to show information to university or government officials (or sponsors), who are responsible for monitoring the safety of this study. Directly identifying information (e.g. names, addresses) will be safeguarded and maintained under controlled conditions. You will not be identified in any publication from this study.
Sample 2. The information in this study will be used only for research purposes and in ways that will not reveal who you are. Federal or state laws may require us to show information to university or government officials (or sponsors) who are responsible for monitoring the safety of this study. You will not be identified in any publication from this study.