In support of 9th International Open Access Week, NTU libraries  facilitated a panel discussion “Open Access Research Data Sharing Requirements: Are you ready?” on 27 Oct 2016.

It was a very lively session where more than 100 people gathered to ask questions and learn about the rationale, challenges and how to prepare for data sharing, NTU’s requirements, data sharing platforms, etc. The audience, made up of NTU faculty, research staff, PhD students, administrative staff as well as a handful from external research institutions, was actively asking questions and giving comments on an online platform (sli.do.com) during the forum. Ms Goh Su Nee from NTU Libraries facilitated the discussion that had received 29 questions online as well as more than 50 responses to 2 open-ended poll questions.

Questions asked by participants on open access data sharing:

  1. Will there be a national drive in data sharing? Like those in US, UK and Australia
  2. When researchers leave NTU, can data still be used by researchers? Can others still cite these researchers?
  3. What about data that has already been collected?
  4. How long is considered as long term?
  5. What formats are not considered research data?
  6. Why should researchers open themselves to scrutiny by making data publicly available?
  7. The first video actually referring to research data repository, regardless on whether the data has been used for publication or not. Will NTU has such system?
  8. Under content analysis, my data could be newspaper articles which are the copyright of publishers. In such a case what do I have to share?
  9. Does the data need to be "peer reviewed"?
  10. What is considered as a 'recognized open access data repository'?
  11. Wouldn't funding agency has the final say on whether research data can be shared or reused?
  12. When is workshop on cc-by thing? We need to understand these?
  13. Research product say a device or a sample like thin films, crystals etc also form the part of data set. Do we need to share them? If yes where is repository?
  14. Why did you choose the CC-BY-NC license and not a less restrictive one such as CC-BY? shouldn't we encourage maximum reuse of data to advance discovery?
  15. Since sharing is the main intention behind OA data, shouldn't all the data sets submitted to OA repositories be in machine-readable formats?
  16. What resources would I need for data sharing?
  17. How does the upcoming NTU research data repository look like?
  18. Who owns my data? Myself, the publisher, the grant dispenser or my institution?
  19. What is the purpose to share data?
  20. What is CC-BY-NC?
  21. What would make data sharing effective?
  22. I have sensitive data. So, I can be exempted from sharing right?
  23. Where and how to share data?
  24. Do I need to share all my data?
  25. Is there a specific timeline for NTU to implement changes to data sharing policy and infrastructure?
  26. Could we have advice on not just broad principles of data sharing, but on challenges of data sharing at NTU? E.g. there may be real cultural challenges.
  27. What are the benefits of sharing my data?
  28. What are NTU requirements?
  29. What is open access data sharing? Where and how to share?

 

Poll Question 1: What challenges would you foresee in open access research data sharing?

  1. How is it recognized for tenure ad promotion? Same level as a paper on a journal?
  2. The cyberattack that may cause threats to our research depositories in the future
  3. Conflict with patents and collaboration contracts that involves monetization of the research output
  4. Lack of understanding or training in data classifications and uploading.
  5. Data might only be accessible using proprietary software
  6. You have helpdesk to guide us?
  7. Misuse of data which I shared
  8. Storage
  9. Data being plagiarized
  10. Ethical issues
  11. Misinterpretation of data
  12. Need time to put in, need to sort data more clearly for other people to read.
  13. Extra time and effort
  14. Need to contact the data owner for clarification of how the data was collected (methods, accuracy)
  15. Uploading big datasets
  16. Not sure why is final data
  17. Security
  18. Don't know how to anonymize sensitive data
  19. Data theft and non-citation of data creator
  20. Data size as some data can be 1TB or close to it
  21. Depositors may not provide detailed enough metadata
  22. Lazy to upload data
  23. Safety
  24. It'll be so costly
  25. Hacking
  26. Lack of citations attribution
  27. Time
  28. Filling the metadata form

 

Poll Question 2: What would make data sharing easier?

  1. Training by professionals to all researchers including fyp students .
  2. Universal data format
  3. Good trainer and training program
  4. Less things to input. Can input eg journals that were published. Don't have to type many things
  5. Researchers should be more proactive in doing all the preparatory work needed to share their data
  6. Demonstration of sharing story from peers within university or other institutes
  7. Systematic indexes and classifications
  8. Understanding need rationale logic and how to do it.
  9. Recognition of being an open data PI.
  10. Incentives/recognition for sharing data openly
  11. Administrative support for meta tagging and uploading
  12. Provide a template where we can just fill-in the necessary details and upload our data to be available online
  13. Knowledge Services dept to help us
  14. Easy to use platform
  15. Helpdesk to render quick help….
  16. A clearer explanation on the meta-data input form or less required fields on it.
  17. More staff to help
  18. Budget to hire data managers
  19. Make it optional
  20. Pay bonus :^)
  21. Support from the library!
  22. Give time
  23. User friendly interface
  24. Simple data storage mechanism
  25. Availability of resources.
  26. Clear guidelines for sharing
  27. Clear instructions
  28. Right culture and mindset

 

A PDF version of the Powerpoint slides presented at the event can be found HERE.

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