Beth Montague-Hellen – InfoDoc MicroVeille

Authors : Minna Ventsel, Beth Montague-Hellen

There has been a lot of discussion within the scientific community around the issues of reproducibility in research, with questions being raised about the integrity of research due to failure to reproduce or confirm the findings of some of the studies. Researchers need to adhere to the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles to contribute to collaborative and open science, but these open data principles can also support reproducibility and issues around ensuring data integrity.

This article uses observations and metrics from data sharing and research integrity related activities, undertaken by a Research Integrity and Data Specialist at the Francis Crick Institute, to discuss potential reasons behind a slow uptake of FAIR data practices. We then suggest solutions undertaken at the Francis Crick institute which can be followed by institutes and universities to improve the integrity of research from a data perspective.

One major solution discussed is the implementation of a data archive system at the Francis Crick Institute to ensure the integrity of data long term, comply with our funders’ data management requirements, and to safeguard our researchers against any potential research integrity allegations in the future.

URL : Researchers and Research Data: Improving and Incentivising Sharing and Archiving

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/v19i1.983

Authors : Beth Montague-Hellen, Kate Montague-Hellen

Researchers are increasingly being asked by funders, publishers and their institutions to share research data alongside written publications, and to include data availability statements to support their readers in finding this data.

In the UK, UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) is one of the largest funding bodies and has had data-sharing policies for several years. This article investigates the reasons why a researcher may or may not share their data and assesses whether funders, publishers and institutions are supporting data-sharing behaviour through their policies and actions.

A survey with 166 responses gave an indicative assessment of researcher opinions around data sharing, and a corpus of 3,277 journal articles retrieved from four UK institutions was analysed using multivariate logistic regression models to provide empirical evidence as to researcher behaviour around data sharing.

The regression models provide insight into how this is affected by the funder, institution and publisher of the research. This study identifies that those publishers and funders who give clear guidance in their policies as to which data should be shared, and where this data should be shared, are most likely to encourage good practice in researchers.

URL : Publishers, funders and institutions: who is supporting UKRI-funded researchers to share data?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.602