A new survey designed to find out more about researchers’ awareness of open data, and their data sharing practices and incentives, reveals that for the majority of respondents, open data is already a reality. More than 2,000 researchers from a variety of institutions and disciplines responded to the survey which was carried out by Figshare, working with Springer Nature and Digital Science.
Over 70% of respondents said that they were aware of data sets that are open to access, reuse, repurpose and redistribute, with researchers in the social sciences having the highest level of awareness.
About three quarters of respondents said that they had made research data open at some point. Of these, 24% said that they do so frequently, and 33% do so sometimes.
68% of respondents said that they value a data citation as much an article citation, while 10% said that they valued a data citation more than an article citation. In contrast, 20% said they did not value a data citation very highly, and 2% did not place any value at all on a data citation.
The report includes a Foreword by Sir Nigel Shadbolt , Chairman and Co-Founder of the Open Data Institute, as well as contributed articles on the international open data landscape.
Download the report here.