PLoS One. 2015 Feb 23;10(2):e0117619. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117619. eCollection 2015.

Researcher perspectives on publication and peer review of data.

Kratz JE1, Strasser C1.

Abstract

Data "publication" seeks to appropriate the prestige of authorship in the peer-reviewed literature to reward researchers who create useful and well-documented datasets. The scholarly communication community has embraced data publication as an incentive to document and share data. But, numerous new and ongoing experiments in implementation have not yet resolved what a data publication should be, when data should be peer-reviewed, or how data peer review should work. While researchers have been surveyed extensively regarding data management and sharing, their perceptions and expectations of data publication are largely unknown. To bring this important yet neglected perspective into the conversation, we surveyed ∼ 250 researchers across the sciences and social sciences- asking what expectations"data publication" raises and what features would be useful to evaluate the trustworthiness, evaluate the impact, and enhance the prestige of a data publication. We found that researcher expectations of data publication center on availability, generally through an open database or repository. Few respondents expected published data to be peer-reviewed, but peer-reviewed data enjoyed much greater trust and prestige. The importance of adequate metadata was acknowledged, in that almost all respondents expected data peer review to include evaluation of the data's documentation. Formal citation in the reference list was affirmed by most respondents as the proper way to credit dataset creators. Citation count was viewed as the most useful measure of impact, but download count was seen as nearly as valuable. These results offer practical guidance for data publishers seeking to meet researcher expectations and enhance the value of published data.

Open Inform - Information about open education and openness

Open Inform will support a community in generating conversation and information about open education, and more broadly openness. This is an opportunity to promote engagement in a range of openness topics such as OSS, OpenEd, OER, Open Governance, Open Access research and data,Open Textbooks, Open Standards, Open Content, Licensing and so on. The goal … to build capacity and provide information about Open Education.

See: http://open-inform.info

Scientific Data approves UK Data Service as recommended data depository

The UK Data Service is delighted to be the first UK-based social science repository to be listed as a recommended repository by Scientific Data.

Scientific Data, the open-access data journal of Nature Publishing Group, publishes the Data Descriptor article type and recommends that datasets accompanying manuscripts be deposited in established and trusted repositories, such as the UK Data Service ReShare. This ensures that these datasets are stably preserved for the longer-term, thoroughly peer-reviewed, and will be easily accessible to the research community after publication.

Using the UK Data Service’s ReShare repository, researchers can easily upload data collections in the social sciences, humanities and medical research, describe these collections and select the access conditions and licences that are best suited to their data. Researchers can then decide whether to publish these data either as fully open data or as safeguarded data that are made available under the UK Data Service’s End User Licence. Safeguarded data may be selected when anonymised data have been collected from human participants (via surveys or interviews), but where there is a risk of participant de-identification resulting from potential linkage to other data. The ReShare repository has inbuilt safeguards, such as requiring registration in order to access safeguarded datasets. This allows social science data to be shared and made available for research as openly as possible. The UK Data Service also reviews these data before their release, so researchers can be confident that they meet with the necessary ethical and legal requirements.

The UK Data Service fully supports the concept of scientific transparency and is increasingly working with journals to help support their policies. The collaboration with Scientific Data gives social science and humanities researchers the opportunity to increase the discoverability of their data via submission of a Data Descriptor, whilst maintaining UK Data Service’s safeguarding of sensitive data.

See: http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/news-and-events/newsitem/?id=4046 

UK Data Service releases guidelines for data purchase

Data purchase – guidelines for researchers

The UK Data Service has produced guidelines for researchers who are considering purchasing data for research.

These guidelines provide a set of generic guiding principles and questions to pose when planning data purchases. Prepared by the UK Data Service team, whose experts advise depositors and help researchers plan pathways to data access, the aim of these guidelines is to help researchers plan their data access requirements more effectively and to reduce the amount of time spent on legal and contractual issues. By following the guidelines, researchers will also ensure that they comply with the relevant research data policies and accountability, especially for ESRC-funded research.

The guidelines were initially developed to support the ESRC's Big Data Network Phase 2 Business and Local Government Data Research Centres, but they are now being released to the wider data research community for the benefit of all researchers.

Data Purchase Guidelines

Collections Development Selection and Appraisal Criteria

Collections Development Policy