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04c_OpenDataChallengesQuickInfoSheet.md

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##CHALLENGES TO OPEN DATA AND HOW TO RESPOND

“Someone may scoop me and find something interesting in it before I have a chance to publish it!”
There are anecdotal stories of this but very little evidence of this happening in any significant way. Regardless of how often it happens, by making your data open, accessible, and citable, you are publicly staking our claim of authorship for that data. See the first reference link below for more thoughts on this (1).

“Why should I let others have my data when I’ve done all the work? It doesn’t do anything for me.”
There has actually been research on this (2, 3) and making your data openly available and linked to your publication increases citations to your publication. It also increases citations rates when someone else reuses and cites your data in their publication. Of course, if your data is part of a federally funded project, many funders require the public have access to it.

“I’m in a niche field. Nobody else could possibly be interested in my data.”
There are many examples of reuse of data for other than original intent that have improved the quality of life for others (4-6). If you make your data citable, you can find out who those other people are and maybe find new collaborators. If nothing else, there is always a demand for open data to use as examples by those teaching others how to do research.

“Documenting data so someone else can understand it is complicated. Who has time?”
Following data management best practices (7, 8) and planning for open data at the beginning and managing it throughout a project takes less time than trying to do data forensics at the end. It also saves you time five or ten years down the road when you’re trying to remember how you got this data and what it all means. By making your data open, it accelerates the advancement of science allowing others to add their brainpower and prohibits wasted time through recollection of data.

“If I put it out there, someone won’t understand it and will use it to come up with wrong conclusions.”
If you provide a detailed abstract including a “constraints of use” statement, as well as a data reuse plan providing a list of all the files in the dataset and the names and types of data in each field, you can prevent misunderstandings concerning your data.

“My institution doesn’t have a repository. I don’t have anywhere to share it.”
Check the re3data (http://www.re3data.org/) repository catalog to find repositories available for storage of your data based on content type, discipline, or geographic location, including freely available repositories such as figshare (https://figshare.com/) and Zenodo (http://zenodo.org/).

“My data is human subjects data with personally identifiable information. I can’t share it.”
You should always check with your IRB before sharing human subjects data. There are actions you can take to still make the data shareable through consent forms, anonymization techniques to remove personally identifiable data, (9, 10) and limiting your data sharing to the metadata about the dataset.

“The data I’m using is owned/copyrighted by someone else. The license forbids me from sharing it.”
If you are not the creator of the data for your research, you may not have the authority to share your data. Be sure to check the terms of the licensing agreement from the data owner before sharing it with anyone else. When you are negotiating for the use of someone else’s data, take the opportunity to promote the idea of making it openly available.

“It’s so confusing! I don’t know where to start.”
Start small with one or two steps, you don’t have to do it all at once. Take a look at the DataONE Best Practices database (7) and see what you can incorporate into your practices now.

####REFERENCES: 1. Stack Exchange thread on “scooping”: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/52016/an-example-of-a-researcher-being-scooped-as-a-result-of-working-openly
2. Piwowar HA, Day RS, Fridsma DB (2007) Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate. PLoS ONE 2(3): e308. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000308
3. Piwowar HA, Vision TJ. (2013) Data reuse and the open data citation advantage. PeerJ 1:e175 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.175
4. Teen cancer researcher Jack Andraka discusses open access in science, stagnation in medicine: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2013/06/03/teen-cancer-researcher-jack-andraka-discusses-open-access-in-science-stagnation-in-medicine/
5. Open-Sourcing a Treatment for Cancer: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/open-sourcing-a-treatment-for-cancer
6. Using Open Data to Solve Social Challenges: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500256359/Using-open-data-to-solve-social-challenges
7. DataONE Best Practices Database: https://www.dataone.org/best-practices
8. UK Data Archive “Managing & Sharing Data: Best Practice for Researchers” http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/media/2894/managingsharing.pdf
9. UK Data Archive “Anonymization - Overview”: http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/create-manage/consent-ethics/anonymisation
10. ICPSR Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving Phase 5: Preparing Data for Sharing: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/deposit/guide/chapter5.html

#####OPEN RESOURCES FOR MORE INFO: