As part of 10th International Open Access Week, the Office of Information, Knowledge & Library Services (OIKLS) organised the panel discussion “Raising your Research visibility with Open Research Data”  on 24 Oct 2017.

About 200 participants including NTU faculty, research staff, PhD students, administrative staff as well as a few from external institutions attended the event. The event started with sneak previews of the NTU & NIE data repositories. The speakers from different disciplines presented their interesting data sharing experience and views followed by panel discussion. Participants were actively involved by posting their questions for panel discussion using the online platform (sli.do.com). Ms Goh Su Nee from OIKLS facilitated the panel discussion that had received 22 questions online as well as about 25 responses to 2 open-ended poll questions.

Presentations of the speakers:

  1. Areas of concern in data sharing & implications for researchers by Assoc. Prof. Rita Elaine SILVER (NIE)
  2. Personal experience of data sharing in text analysis by Assoc. Prof. Christopher KHOO (WKWSCI)
  3. Data Sharing among biologists & publishing in data journals by Assoc. Prof. Hallam STEVENS (SoH)
  4. Data sharing among linguists, social science concerns & audio data anonymisation by Dr. Hiram RING (EEE)
  5. Video data anonymisation by Ms. Galyna KOGUT (NIE)
  6. Metadata & ontology in data sharing by Ms. Schusie SUN (WKWSCI).

Questions asked by participants on open access data sharing:

  1. Data sharing involves so much work, is it really worth the time, effort and money? Any good balanced approach to share?
  2. How the library tackle copyright issue as most of publishers hold copyright for final research data and papers
  3. It seems that NTU-DR system only for data that is used for a published paper. What about those that are not used now, but may be used many years later?
  4. How necessary it is to share data
  5. How important is it to have space to store your working data?
  6. If I’m a young researcher, how can I get into a community who share data?
  7. If your institution offers you a platform to store your final data, would you use it?
  8. If a goverment body wants to get personal infomation from the anonymous data? Or private entity for commercial purposes? Any policy or options regarding these?
  9. It's hard enough to get IRB approval. This seems like it will much harder
  10. How open are funding agencies in Singapore to data sharing? Can the data sharing process be set up to incorporate commercialisation concerns?
  11. Is this accessible to scholars outside of NTU?
  12. In some indigenous communities, consent is collective not individual. What does it mean for one person to give consent when this is whole community decision?
  13. How does open access interface with ethical research protocols requiring anonymity for research participants?
  14. What are your thoughts on platforms like Sci-Hub and LibGen (pirate sites to bypass paywalled journals)?

Questions related to NTU and NIE open access data repositories:

  1. What if I have already deposited my final research dataset in another data repository?
  2. Can data be archived in more than one repository? why use NTU rather than international subject-specific site that has greater visibility?
  3. Is there a term of use for data deposited?
  4. Am I allowed to update the files deposited?
  5. What if I have already deposited my final research dataset in another data repository?
  6. Can I remove previous versions when I upload new version of data?
  7. Can I open my data with a permissive license that will allow commercial use?
  8. Will I still have access to DR-NTU (Data) when I leave NTU?
  9. Currently what type of data is accepted in the repository ? Only final datasets or raw data as well?
  10. When data is cited, how can it be tracked?
  11. Is NIE and NTU data repository similar?

 

Poll Question 1: What would motivate/incentivize data sharing?

  1. Do you know other researchers in your discipline who's passionate about data sharing?
  2. How prevalent is the culture of data sharing in your discipline?
  3. When researchers have something tangible to gain
  4. If the sharing of data counted towards my performance indicators
  5. Grant funding incentives at the onset for those who will share data
  6. Strong support system
  7. When data citation count is as recognizable as journal paper citation count
  8. To prove your research outcome
  9. Reuse
  10. Required by research funder and discipline

 

Poll Question 2: How can NTU provide better support in data sharing?

  1. Provide standardised data definition and format and ontology so that data can be easily understand and share on NTU, Singapore and society.
  2. More events like this!
  3. Letting data also count for contribution on the field for a PhD candidacy
  4. Provide NTU student employment in this area
  5. There is a thin line on the policy for data sharing . Should it be mandatory?
  6. Recognise and acknowledge data sharing in kpis for faculty and students
  7. Examplars of data sharing citations
  8. If NTU can help in the effort of documenting the metadata into the system
  9. Make clear what are the incentives for sharing via NTU vs. other international subject specific databases
  10. A directory of data sharing colleagues by research areas
  11. Providing students to clean up our data
  12. Training for researchers
  13. Hire more experts to support the researchers

 

If you have questions unanswered, come to find out more at our upcoming NTU open access data repository launch on 8 Nov 2017.