The majority of health and health researchers who declare their willingness to share data on the back of journal articles do not respond to requests for access or provide database when asked, research report Livia Puljak, an evidence-based medical student at the University of Croatia Catholic University in Zagreb, and her colleagues have analyzed biomedical and 3,556 health models. The team identified 381 articles with links to data stored on online archives and another 1,792 pages authored by the authors. statements that their data sets will be available on request. The rest of the study said that their data was in a published manuscript with its ingredients, or it did not produce data, so sharing did not work. Only 14%, or 254, affected authors responded to data email requests, and only 6.7 percent, or 120 authors, actually provided data in a usable format.
Puljak was “so overwhelmed with anger” that few researchers shared their data. “There is a gap between what people say and what people do,” he said. “Only if we ask for details can we see their attitude through data sharing.” “It’s shocking that don’t come up with database,” said Rebecca Li, executive director of global nonprofit data – Vivli-based platform based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Valentin Danchev, a sociologist at the University of Essex in Colchester.
Puljak’s results are similar to those of the Danchev-led study, which found lower database sharing rates by paper authors in leading medical journals stating that all clinical trials must share data. Some had not yet received informed consent or authorization of ethics to share data; others left the project, had data in the wrong place or quoted language barriers when it came to translating quality data from interviews.
Aidan Tan, a pediatrician and research-based medical researcher at the University of Sydney in Australia, says research shows that continuous barriers stop researchers from sharing their data. Her research leaders in clinical trial studies have found concerns about data confidentiality, participant confidentiality and misused data in the second misleading analysis3. Researchers may also want to publish the first real research, or be afraid of information. Previous research suggests that some fields, such as ecology, favor data sharing more than others. But numerous clinical trials of COVID-19 – including some from Li4,5 and Tan6 – have reported that anywhere from about half to 80% of investigators are willing or willing to share database freely.
“It is disturbing,” said Tan, “that data sharing processes did not appear to be improving at all during the COVID-19 violence, despite high data sharing calls” from funded organizations such as Wellcome in London, US. National Health Institutions and the World Health Organization. Li estimates that many researchers do not fully understand what data sharing really means: those database that supports manuscripts “should be accurate, formatted and accessible to anyone who asks,” he says. Encouraging researchers to prepare their data, Li says, journals can make data sharing statements conditional. They may need authors to elaborate on where they will share crude database, who will be able to access it, when and how.
Sponsors may also raise data sharing rates. The US National Institutes of Health, in an effort to curb wasteful and irreplaceable research, will soon authorize grant applicants to incorporate data management and sharing systems into their applications. Finally, they will need to share the data publicly.”The power to move data sharing forward lies with those who have the money and the researchers to change the culture,” Li said.
Source Journal Reference: Clare Watson, Many researchers say they’ll share data — but don’t, Nature News (2022), https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01692-1
