Survey: open data already a reality for scientific researchers

Open data is already a reality for scientific researchers, especially for those in Social Sciences. Researchers are making data openly available and — in turn — are re-using open data from others in their research. For a lot of researchers, a data citation has a much value as an article citation. These are some of the conclusions of a survey of over 2,000 researchers about their attitude and experiences in working with data, sharing it and making it open. The results were published this fall in the Figshare Digital Science Report 'The State of Open Data'.

The report has been supported by the company Digital Science, and the survey was conducted in partnership with the publisher Springer Nature.

Furthering research

The authors of the report have indications that the future will be more open: Researchers who have never made data openly available are considering doing so.

Today's findings show we have reached a key inflection point in the research community, said Daniel Hook, Managing Director at Digital Science. Nearly three-quarters of all researchers, whether by mandate or not, state they have made their data sets open and available, and value a data citation as much as an article citation. This clearly demonstrates researchers consider sharing data sets as core to the furthering of research.