Imagine a scientist from a small university who has spent a decade creating a unique data set by collecting thousands of measurements of a prairie ecosystem that is adapting to climate change. Despite struggles with funding and the time-consuming demands of her teaching duties, she publishes her first piece in what she intends to be a series of papers on this ecosystem. As a supplement to the paper, she shares her data on the Web. A year later she finds that a large, well-funded research group has downloaded her data and, without contacting her, published multiple papers that present the same analysis she was planning on doing.

It’s not clear how often this scenario happens in science, but many scientists worry about it. While most government agencies and journals make scientists agree to share their data as a condition of funding and publication, researchers often have strong incentives not to share. The ethics of sharing in science are murky, and journals and funding agencies have largely left the specifics of what and when to share up to the individual scientists. As Jonas Waldenström at the University of Linnaeus explained, “it is one thing where your data is used as a brick in a new construction, and another to have someone taking over your house and having to give away the key.” When they share data, scientists want to be sure they’re handing over a brick, and not the key to their ongoing creative projects. In many cases, if you want someone’s data, you won’t find it up on the Web—you have to ask for it directly.
via Pacific Standard

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