Should we share our research data?
As data archivists and data analysts, this question crops up a lot! Let’s be honest with ourselves there is NO one answer fits all here! I would love to say YES we should share our data – but then I step back and say HOLD IT! I don’t want anyone being able to access my personal information – so maybe… we shouldn’t share our data. But then the reasonable part of me goes WHOA! What about all that research data? My BSc, MSc, PhD data – that should definitely be shared. But.. should it really? Oh… I can go back and forth all day and provide you with the whys to share data and the why nots to share data. Hmmm…
So, why am I bringing this up now (and again) and in this forum? Conversations I’ve been having with different data creators – that’s it. But why? Because everyone has a different reason why or why not to share their data. So I want us all to take a step back and remember that little acronym FAIR!
I’m finding that more and more of our community recognizes FAIR and what it stands for – but does everyone really remember what the FAIR principles represent? There seems to be this notion that if you have FAIR data it means you are automatically going to share it. I will say NOPE that is not true!!! So if we go back and read the FAIR principles a little closer – you can see that they are referring to the (meta)data!!
Let’s dig into that just a little bit…… Be honest – is there anything secret about the variables you are collecting? Remember we are not talking about the actual data – just the description of what you are collecting. I will argue that about 98% of us are able to share the metadata or description of our datasets. For instance, I am collecting First Name of all respondents, but this is sensitive information. Fabulous!! I now know you are collecting first names and it’s sensitive info, which means it will NOT be shared! That’s great – I know that data will not be shared but I know you have collected it! The data is FAIR! I’ll bet you can work through this for all your variables.
Again – why am I talking about this yet again? Remember our Semantic Engine? What does it do? Helps you create the schema to your dataset! Helps you create or describe your dataset – making it FAIR! We can share our data schemas – we can let others see what we are collecting and really open the doors to potential and future collaborations – with NO data sharing!
So what’s stopping you? Create a data schema – let it get out – and share your metadata!
