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IOP Publishing marks Open Access Week by releasing study of scientific data sharing

21 October 2024

Research highlights differences in how physical science research communities adopt open data sharing and the various barriers they encounter.


The Institute of Physics' society-owned scientific publisher, IOP Publishing (IOPP), has today released the details of a study looking at the way data is handled in over 30,000 research articles.

Published at the start of Open Access Week, the findings have been released in the IOPP’s whitepaper “Bringing researchers on board: Navigating the barriers to sharing data publicly”.

It finds that overall, only one in ten physical science researchers share Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data alongside their published articles.

Environmental scientists are the most open with their research data, yet legal constraints related to third-party ownership often limit their ability to follow the FAIR principles.

It also reports that physicists are often willing to share data but have concerns about the accessibility and understanding of the formats used.

And engineering and materials scientists face the most significant barriers to sharing FAIR data due to concerns over confidentiality and sensitivity.

The FAIR principles were introduced in 2016 to standardise metadata, assign persistent identifiers, and provide clear usage licenses, ensuring that research data can be easily located, accessed, combined, and reused with proper attribution.

Since 2022, the IOPP has required all authors to include a data availability statement in their articles, outlining whether and how the data supporting their research can be accessed. This policy was extended in 2023, requiring authors who are unable or unwilling to share their data publicly to explain why.

Other ways the society’s publisher supports open data practices include introducing innovative content types within its journals. For example, its new open access Machine Learning journal series includes dataset, benchmark, and challenge articles.

Daniel Keirs, Head of Journal Strategy and Performance at IOPP and lead analyst of the white paper, commented on the findings: “What we’re seeing is that the barriers to open data are numerous and diversified, even within the physical sciences.

“We need to re-think several key areas, such as the standardisation of data formats, proprietary data issues, data repositories and how we incentivise data sharing. It’s going to take a concerted effort across the scientific ecosystem.”

View the white paper here.