swedish national data service's strategy for sharing and mediating data practices of open...

Swedish National Data Service's Strategy for Sharing and

Mediating DataPractices of Open Access to and Reuse of Research Data

– The State of the Art in Sweden 2009

Carina Carlhed, Iris AlfredssonIASSIST/IFDO 2009. Mobile data and the life cycle

Committee for Research Infrastructures (KFI)• formulates long-term strategies• handles resource allocation for expensive scientific

equipment, large research facilities and extensive databases• deals with Swedish interests in, and funding of, various

national and international research infrastructures.

The overall aim is to provide better conditions for Swedish researchers by ensuring access to high quality infrastructures.

Producer of Swedish Research Council's Guide to Infrastructure

23-04-21 IASSIST/IFDO 2009. Mobile data and the life cycle

Database InfraStructure Committe (DISC)

• promote the development of an effective infrastructure for sharing research data resources in Sweden

• aims to ensure that researchers have rapid, easy, and free-of-charge access to research databases of high quality


Transforming SSD into SND

“SND shall meet the needs of the research community for data on empirical research in the areas of social science, humanities, and medicine. Actions include providing technical, legal, educational, and other administrative resources for collecting, storing, and distributing data for research.”


Strategic areas SND


Quality ensuring

Technical edvelopment & infrastructure

Collaboration

Data

•Localize

•Collect & preserve

•Document & process

•Maintain & mediate

Services

•Information

•Support

•Guidance

Social sciences Humanities Epidemiology/public health research

Important task for SND to strengthen the altruistic reception of the importance of data sharing and open access among researchers.


• Legal barriers

• Possessiv barriers


Activities to promote data sharing

• Influence research financiers• support researchers through the whole

research process• be present in different research contexts and

to inform about the benefits of sharing data


Feed-back from the research community


The SND surveys• Two surveys, researchers in Humanities and Social

sciences, 1) Swedish professors and 2) doctoral students

• Email questionnaires• Approx. 80 items covering for example; the

researchers affiliations, domain of discipline, gender, age, familiarities with research policies and ventures, and opinions to use, re-use, archiving practices of digital research data

• Response rates: professors 38 % (N=549) and doctoral students 28 % (N=1147)

• Comparation with a Finnish survey from 2006

IASSIST/IFDO 2009. Mobile data and the life cycle23-04-21

Results and conclusions…

• descriptive and presented tentatively• the researchers’ attitudes towards current

ventures and strivings in research infrastructures are predominantly positive

• important to raise issues of guidelines concerning accessibility to digital research data

• engage researchers and relevant authorities in creating arenas for discussing and shaping research infrastructure for the future


Practices of re-using digital data(professors, n=464- 475, 85-87%) always common

not common nor unusual unusual never don’t know

1 used as empirical material

34 (7%)

195 (41%)

121 (25%) 68 (14%) 6 (1%) 51 (11%)

2 kept with the researcher without no further documentation

16 (3%)

198 (43%)

71 (15%) 61 (13%) 15 (3%) 104 (22%)

3 archived at the university, described in a catalogue

8 (2%) 40 (9%) 71 (15%)158

(34%)66 (14%) 124 (27%)

4 shared to a data service (like SND)

6 (1%) 29 (6%) 37 (8%)143

(31%)91 (20%) 158 (34%)

5 destroyed after analysis and publication

1 (0%) 13 (3%) 59 (13%)140

(30%)88 (19%) 163 (35%)

6 re-used for other research or PhD work

8 (2%)94

(20%)170 (37%) 78 (17%) 12 (3%) 102 (22%)

7 used in undergraduate education

6 (1%)92

(20%)176 (38%) 73 (16%) 23 (5%) 96 (21%)


Opinions of benefits of increasing accessibility to data

professors, n=381- 391, 69-71%)Very significant Fairly significant

Fairly insignificant No benefit

1 reducing ”double work” in data collection

115 (29%) 186 (48%) 75 (19%) 15 (4%)

2 use available resources more effectively

121 (31%) 188 (49%) 64 (17%) 13 (3%)

3 increase communication and collaboration within the research society

92 (24%) 215 (56%) 66 (17%) 8 (2%)

4 enabling scrutiny (and repeatability) of research results

130 (33%) 196 (50%) 57 (15%) 7 (2%)

5 improving the quality of research

102 (26%) 185 (47%) 84 (21%) 20 (5%)

6 improving the quality of teaching

60 (15%) 162 (42%) 140 (36%) 28 (7%)

7 enhancing diversity of research designs

77 (20%) 189 (49%) 108 (28%) 15 (4%)

8 more equal access to data for different groups

114 (29%) 181 (46%) 75 (19%) 20 (5%)


Results and conclusions… • Key actors - the universities and university colleges

themselves and The Swedish Research Council (VR) and The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS).

• effective interventions for enhancing accessibility to digital data

1) research grants should include funds for preparing the data for sharing and archiving

2) Making data accessible for the use by the scientific community is acknowledged to be scientific merit.

3) more education about life cycles of digital data and research ethics.


Obstacles to re-using data and sharing

• important reasons for not reusing digital data - Swedish researchers emphasize ethical, juridical, technical aspects and issues quality of data as more problematic than the Finnish researchers.

• obstacles to sharing digital data – Swedish professors regard deficiency of resources for

researchers to document and arrange their data to reusable conditions, as the most difficult obstacle to sharing digital data together with lacking guidelines to documentation,

– while the Finnish professors reported that it was the situation when the respondents were not informed that their contributions should be used in the research society generally. They share this concern with the Swedish doctoral students.


Sharing digital data…

• the professors seems to be more eager to share data than the doctoral students.

• A large proportion of the total group was also expressing doubts in sharing data, probably because uncertainty and lack of sufficient guidelines.

• Researchers in Humanities however, were those who distinguished themselves as potential “sharers”.


Finally…

• acknowledge the researchers’ positive orientation about e-science

• put forward these survey results of opinions of digital research data and barriers to share and re-use

• At last, the results of these surveys have to be acknowledged and seriously taken care of in understanding the obstacles and challenges we face in order to achieve a sufficient and approved research infrastructure


swedish national data service's strategy for sharing and mediating data practices of open...

Documents

mobile data

research data resources

reuse of research data

life cycleiassistifdo

importance of data sharing

benefits of sharing

life cyclecommittee

life cycleactivities