Views of Ethical Best Practices in Sharing Individual-Level Data From Medical and Public Health Research : A Systematic Scoping Review

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There is increasing support for sharing individual-level data generated by medical and public health research. This scoping review of empirical research and conceptual literature examined stakeholders’ perspectives of ethical best practices in data sharing, particularly in low- and middle-income settings. Sixty-nine empirical and conceptual articles were reviewed, of which, only five were empirical studies and eight were conceptual articles focusing on low- and middle-income settings.

We conclude that support for sharing individual-level data is contingent on the development and implementation of international and local policies and processes to support ethical best practices. Further conceptual and empirical research is needed to ensure data sharing policies and processes in low- and middle-income settings are appropriately informed by stakeholders’ perspectives.

URL : Views of Ethical Best Practices in Sharing Individual-Level Data From Medical and Public Health Research

Alternative location : http://m.jre.sagepub.com/content/10/3/225

Sharing Public Health Research Data: Toward the Development of Ethical Data-Sharing Practice in Low- and Middle-Income Settings

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It is increasingly recognized that effective and appropriate data sharing requires the development of models of good datasharing practice capable of taking seriously both the potential benefits to be gained and the importance of ensuring that the rights and interests of participants are respected and that risk of harms is minimized. Calls for the greater sharing of individual-level data from biomedical and public health research are receiving support among researchers and research funders. Despite its potential importance, data sharing presents important ethical, social, and institutional challenges in low-income settings.

In this article, we report on qualitative research conducted in five low- and middle-income countries exploring the experiences of key research stakeholders and their views about what constitutes good data-sharing practice.

URL : Sharing Public Health Research Data

Alternative location : http://m.jre.sagepub.com/content/10/3/217

Assessment of Data Management Services at New England Region Resource Libraries

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Objective

To understand how New England medical libraries are addressing scientific research data management and providing services to their communities.

Setting

The National Network of Libraries of Medicine, New England Region (NN/LM NER) contains 17 Resource Libraries. The University of Massachusetts Medical School serves as the New England Regional Medical Library (RML). Sixteen of the NER Resource Libraries completed this survey.

Methods

A 40-question online survey assessed libraries’ services and programs for providing research data management education and support. Libraries shared their current plans and institutional challenges associated with developing data services.

Results

This study shows few NER Resource Libraries currently integrate scientific research data management into their services and programs, and highlights the region’s use of resources provided by the NN/LM NER RML at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Conclusions

Understanding the types of data services being delivered at NER libraries helps to inform the NN/LM NER about the eScience learning needs of New England medical librarians and helps in the planning of professional development programs that foster effective biomedical research data services.

URL : Assessment of Data Management Services at New England Region Resource Libraries

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2015.1068

Knowledge Infrastructures in Science: Data, Diversity, and Digital Libraries

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Digital libraries can be deployed at many points throughout the life cycles of scientific research projects from their inception through data collection, analysis, documentation, publication, curation, preservation, and stewardship. Requirements for digital libraries to manage research data vary along many dimensions, including life cycle, scale, research domain, and types and degrees of openness.

This article addresses the role of digital libraries in knowledge infrastructures for science, presenting evidence from long-term studies of four research sites. Findings are based on interviews (n=208), ethnographic fieldwork, document analysis, and historical archival research about scientific data practices, conducted over the course of more than a decade.

The Transformation of Knowledge, Culture, and Practice in Data-Driven Science: A Knowledge Infrastructures Perspective project is based on a 2×2 design, comparing two “big science” astronomy sites with two “little science” sites that span physical sciences, life sciences, and engineering, and on dimensions of project scale and temporal stage of life cycle.

The two astronomy sites invested in digital libraries for data management as part of their initial research design, whereas the smaller sites made smaller investments at later stages. Role specialization varies along the same lines, with the larger projects investing in information professionals, and smaller teams carrying out their own activities internally. Sites making the largest investments in digital libraries appear to view their datasets as their primary scientific legacy, while other sites stake their legacy elsewhere. Those investing in digital libraries are more concerned with the release and reuse of data; types and degrees of openness vary accordingly.

The need for expertise in digital libraries, data science, and data stewardship is apparent throughout all four sites. Examples are presented of the challenges in designing digital libraries and knowledge infrastructures to manage and steward research data.

URL : http://works.bepress.com/borgman/371/

Sizing the Problem of Improving Discovery and Access to NIH-Funded Data: A Preliminary Study

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Objective

This study informs efforts to improve the discoverability of and access to biomedical datasets by providing a preliminary estimate of the number and type of datasets generated annually by research funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). It focuses on those datasets that are “invisible” or not deposited in a known repository.

Methods

We analyzed NIH-funded journal articles that were published in 2011, cited in PubMed and deposited in PubMed Central (PMC) to identify those that indicate data were submitted to a known repository. After excluding those articles, we analyzed a random sample of the remaining articles to estimate how many and what types of invisible datasets were used in each article.

Results

About 12% of the articles explicitly mention deposition of datasets in recognized repositories, leaving 88% that are invisible datasets. Among articles with invisible datasets, we found an average of 2.9 to 3.4 datasets, suggesting there were approximately 200,000 to 235,000 invisible datasets generated from NIH-funded research published in 2011. Approximately 87% of the invisible datasets consist of data newly collected for the research reported; 13% reflect reuse of existing data. More than 50% of the datasets were derived from live human or non-human animal subjects.

Conclusion

In addition to providing a rough estimate of the total number of datasets produced per year by NIH-funded researchers, this study identifies additional issues that must be addressed to improve the discoverability of and access to biomedical research data: the definition of a “dataset,” determination of which (if any) data are valuable for archiving and preservation, and better methods for estimating the number of datasets of interest. Lack of consensus amongst annotators about the number of datasets in a given article reinforces the need for a principled way of thinking about how to identify and characterize biomedical datasets.

URL : Sizing the Problem of Improving Discovery and Access to NIH-Funded Data: A Preliminary Study

DOI : 10.1371/journal.pone.0132735

Research Data Practices in Veterinary Medicine: A Case Study

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Objective
To determine trends in research data output, reuse, and sharing of the college of veterinary medicine faculty members at a large academic research institution.
Methods
This bibliographic study was conducted by examining original research articles for indication of the types of data produced, as well as evidence that the authors reused data or made provision for sharing their own data. Findings were recorded in the categories of research type, data type, data reuse, data sharing, author collaboration, and grants/funding and were analyzed to determine trends.
Results
A variety of different data types were encountered in this study, even within a single article, resulting primarily from clinical and laboratory animal studies. All of the articles resulted from author collaboration, both within the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign, as well as with researchers outside the institution. There was little indication that data was reused, except some instances where the authors acknowledged that data was obtained directly from a colleague. There was even less indication that the research data was shared, either as a supplementary file on the publisher’s website or by submission to a repository, except in the case of genetic data.
Conclusions
Veterinary researchers are prolific producers and users of a wide variety of data. Despite the large amount of collaborative research occurring in veterinary medicine, this study provided little evidence that veterinary researchers are reusing or sharing their data, except in an informal manner. Wider adoption of data management plans may serve to improve researchers’ data management practices.

Managing Research Data in Academic Institutions: Role of Libraries

“One of the global emerging trends in academic libraries is to facilitate the management of research data for the benefit of researchers and institutions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of a library in offering such research data management services. The paper discusses the importance of research data, its preservation, organization, dissemination and critical role in the scholarly research life cycle. The authors attempt to provide a vivid description of Research Data Management (RDM) as a service and in the process review the existing literature on the topic in addition to the indicating the tools and technologies that could be adopted in successful RDM service implementation. The paper also is an attempt to share the experience of creating the Vikram Sarabhai Library’s research data repository that was developed by adopting the open source software – CKAN.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/24911/