Sharing research data: researcher behaviour and attitudes

Federal funders of research are increasing the stringency of their expectations that researchers make data collected in federally funded projects publicly available. In response, universities have increased support for public access to data collected by their faculty and staff. This article reports on researcher attitudes and behaviour towards data sharing at one such university, Iowa State University, at a time when the university was significantly increasing its support for formal sharing of research data. It finds that although sharing of research data through formal channels is limited, it is more common through informal channels, and that the effects of increased institutional support for formal data sharing appear relatively limited. Together these findings suggest that the benefits of increasing formal channels of data sharing may be limited and costly.