As a data intensive field that unites researchers from many disciplines, Earth System Science (ESS) is an ideal site for examining evolving cross‐disciplinary data practices. This paper reports on results from a survey examining data sharing, data reuse, and research reproducibility practices of ESS researchers, aimed at informing improvements in data services for interdisciplinary sciences. Data reuse was found to be very high for new and comparative analyses but very limited for reproducing research. Data sharing was also strong, mostly through supplements to published papers, with moderate use of open access repositories. At the same time, there was interesting variability in both data sharing and reuse among ESS disciplines. The most pronounced challenges to reuse and reproducibility stem from limited documentation on how data are collected and managed, practices that are poorly supported by institutions, funders, and publishers. A more refined approach to “reproducibility” is needed that aligns with priorities and practices within the research community. Just as importantly, advances in data service models for ESS and other interdisciplinary fields need to account for the diverse and distributed system of repositories and build a workforce with deeper knowledge of the complex data and methods that drive integrative systems science.
Data sharing and reuse practices in social sciences have changed in the past few decades with the continuing development of cyber‐infrastructures. However, little is known about how such practices chronically change over time. Via the lens of 35 years' worth of archived data on the world's largest social science data infrastructure, ICPSR, this study aims to reveal data characteristics (e.g., archived data themes and temporal distribution) that shape and represent the trend of social science data sharing and reuse. After a preliminary analysis on metadata of 10,362 studies and 159,616 associated citation records, an upward trend is found regarding the number of studies archived on ICPSR and their citation counts. We also report problems with metadata standards and the challenges of reusing data derived from these studies. Our results can be a cornerstone to investigate the roles of ICPSR as a research data infrastructure within the context of open science.
While the importance of open science is further highlighted during the pandemic, the challenges of managing and sharing individual participant data (IPD) derived from clinical studies never cease. The nature of IPD, e.g., confidentiality or sensitivity, makes it difficult to maintain a good balance between data sharing and individual privacy protection. To date, many access control mechanisms for IPD do exist, but conventional solutions and services are deemed scattered and still not in place. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the IPD sharing tensions, we conducted a systematic literature review with 64 academic publications that discuss the access control mechanisms built for IPD in clinical studies. Via the knowledge infrastructure (KI) framework, we identified nine key aspects involved and the relationships between major stakeholders in the IPD access control ecosystem. Our results anticipate informing the future design of an IPD management checklist that data professionals can use to guide their clients when releasing sensitive biomedical data.
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