Paper on the Incentives for Academic Data Sharing published: „What Drives Academic Sharing?“

Posted: March 1st, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Data Sharing | Tags: , | Comments Off on Paper on the Incentives for Academic Data Sharing published: „What Drives Academic Sharing?“

4382377118_44bdba7229_mBenedikt Fecher, Sascha Friesike, and Marcel Hebing have published another paper presenting further results of their study concerning academic data sharing. Since data sharing enables researchers to verify results and to pursuit new research questions with “old” data, it is of particular importance for scientific progress.

Fecher, Friesike, and Hebing conducted a systematic review of 98 scholarly papers as well as an empirical survey among 603 secondary data users. In order to explain the data sharing process from the primary researcher’s point of view, the authors introduce a conceptual framework based on the analyses. They divide the data sharing process into six descriptive categories: data donor, research organization, research community, norms, data infrastructure, and data recipients. Read the rest of this entry »


New Working Paper on Data Sharing Practises published: “A Reputation Economy”

Posted: February 25th, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Data Sharing, Report | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

hare_c_flickrAcademic data sharing is a way for researchers to collaborate and thereby meet the needs of an increasingly complex research landscape. It enables researchers to verify results and to pursuit new research questions with “old” data.

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It is therefore not surprising that data sharing is advocated by funding agencies, journals and researchers alike. Read the rest of this entry »


Open Access to Research Data: Strategic Delay and the Ambiguous Welfare Effects of Mandatory Data Disclosure

Posted: February 23rd, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Data Policy, Data Sharing, EDaWaX | Tags: , , | Comments Off on Open Access to Research Data: Strategic Delay and the Ambiguous Welfare Effects of Mandatory Data Disclosure

8516269783_79248f4ba2_mPatrick Andreoli-Versbach and Frank Mueller-Langer (two economists from the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich) have published a paper on strategic delay and the ambiguous welfare effects of mandatory data disclosure (2014).

By setting up a model describing the incentives of a researcher to share self-generated data with the research community in the context of a published article, they found that these incentives can be distorted by a policy they call “First Paper Policy” (requires authors to share their data immediately after the first publication): Read the rest of this entry »


EDaWaX-Study on Data Policies of Journals in Economics and Business Studies (Part I)

Posted: January 14th, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Data Policy, EDaWaX, journals | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

300_Journals_DFG1One work package (WP2) of EDaWaX’s second funding phase deals with a broader analysis and comparison of journals’ data policies in economics and business studies. In the project’s first funding phase we already have conducted a similar survey, but it primarily focused on journals in economics.

Because research data and methodology in business studies are not necessarily identical to those employed in economics, we found it to be important to compare journals’ data policies of both branches of economic research. Read the rest of this entry »


Report of the 1st national RDA Germany Meeting is online

Posted: November 28th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Conference, Data Sharing | Tags: , | Comments Off on Report of the 1st national RDA Germany Meeting is online

RDA_DEOn November 20/21 the first national RDA Meeting Germany was held in Potsdam. More than 100 participants followed the presentations and discussions. One aim of the meeting was to inform interested people and institutions about RDA’s activities.

On the first day of the conference there were many presentations to inform about the results RDA has yet archived as well as the governance structure that has been defined for RDA. In addition, some perspectives for the future work of the RDA-IGs and WGs have been discussed. Read the rest of this entry »


New KE-Publication: “Sowing the seed” #Update

Posted: November 13th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Data Sharing, Report | Tags: , | Comments Off on New KE-Publication: “Sowing the seed” #Update

250_KE_sowing the seedsA few days ago,  Knowledge Exchange (KE) – a cooperation of five national funding organisations (DFG, Surf, DEFF, CSC and JISC) – has just released a new publication, titled “Sowing the seed: Incentives and motivations for sharing research data, a researchers’ perspective.”

This qualitative study has gathered evidence, examples and opinions on current and future incentives for research data sharing from the researchers’ point of view, in order to provide recommendations for policy and practice development on how best to incentivize data access and re-use.

Incentives and motivations ask for development of a data infrastructure with rich context where research data, papers and other outputs or resources are jointly available within a single data resource. Different types of data sharing and research disciplines need to be acknowledged. Read the rest of this entry »


Open Access to Data: An Ideal Professed but not Practised

Posted: November 7th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Data Sharing, EDaWaX | Tags: , | Comments Off on Open Access to Data: An Ideal Professed but not Practised

300_ Emilio Quintana_share-computer-key-260_flickr_comThe two economists Patrick Andreoli-Versbach and Frank Mueller-Langer (both from the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich) have published a new paper in Research Policy in which they analyse the data-sharing behaviour of 488 randomly selected empirical researchers.*

Andreoli-Versbach and Mueller-Langer (2014) provide evidence that most researchers in economics and management do not share their data voluntarily. The authors Read the rest of this entry »


Biomedical Sciences: Journals unite to forster reproducible research

Posted: November 6th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: found on the net | Tags: , | Comments Off on Biomedical Sciences: Journals unite to forster reproducible research

300_Bill_Dickinson_Laboratory_Science_biomedical_flickr_comWhen it comes to the topic of replication, it always is a good idea to consult the webpages of the nature journal. Yesterday, for instance, the journal reported that a group of editors representing more than 30 major journals, representatives from funding agencies as well as scientific leaders discussed principles and guidelines for preclinical biomedical research in June 2014.

The gathering was convened by the US National Institutes of Health, Nature and Science.

The attendees agreed on a common set of principles and guidelines in reporting preclinical research that list proposed journal policies and author reporting requirements in order to promote transparency and reproducibility. Read the rest of this entry »


Science established “Statistical Board of Reviewing Editors” to investigate data

Posted: October 21st, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: found on the net, journals, Research Data | Tags: | Comments Off on Science established “Statistical Board of Reviewing Editors” to investigate data

250_166997_web_R_K_B_by_S. Hofschlaeger_pixelio.deIn order to provide better oversight of the interpretation of observational data handed in to the journal along with manuscripts, Science established the Statistical Board of Reviewing Editors (SBoRE), which started working on 1st July, 2014.

The board consists of experts in various aspects of statistics and data analysis. Their task is to investigate manuscripts, in order to identify issues which need screening, and to suggest experts from the statistics community to examine that data. Editors, BoRE members (members of the BoREBoard of Reviewing Editors – conduct a rapid quality check of the manuscripts and propose which of them should be reviewed by technical specialists), and reviewers can decide which manuscripts need additional examination of the data analysis or statistical treatment, which will then be handed in to the SBoRE. Read the rest of this entry »


PLOS, CDL, and DataONE join forces to build incentives for data sharing

Posted: October 9th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: found on the net, Projects | Tags: , , , | Comments Off on PLOS, CDL, and DataONE join forces to build incentives for data sharing

250_stevie spiers photography_flickr_comThe open access publisher PLOS (Public Library of Science), the University of California Curation Center at the California Digital Library, and DataONE  announced the launch of a new project to develop data-level metrics. The project, titled “Making Data Count: Developing a Data Metrics Pilot” is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US. The project will result in a suite of metrics that track and measure data use.

The need for such a data metrics pilot is obvious: Sharing data is time consuming and researchers need incentives for undertaking the extra work. Metrics for data will provide feedback on data usage, views, and impact that will help encourage researchers to share their data. This project will explore and test the metrics needed to capture activity surrounding research data. Read the rest of this entry »


Guidebook “Discover-Cite-Document: Research Data in the Social Sciences and Economics” published

Posted: September 18th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: EDaWaX, German, Research Data | Tags: , , , , | Comments Off on Guidebook “Discover-Cite-Document: Research Data in the Social Sciences and Economics” published

250_cover_FoDaBroschAfter almost eight months of intense collaborative work, we are happy to announce the release of a guidebook on research data in the social sciences and economics. The idea of writing the guidebook was born in the course of a panel session on last year’s annual meeting of the “Verein für Socialpolitik” (VfS), the largest German-speaking economists association, where Jutta Günther (Halle Institute for Economic Research), Klaus Tochtermann (ZBW), Gert G. Wagner (German Data Forum and DIW Berlin) and Stefan Winkler-Nees (German Research Foundation) discussed both the potential and the need of data sharing in applied economics.

The panellists assessed that there currently is a lack of information on data documentation and citation in academic education.

Consequently, together with our partners from DIW Berlin, GESIS and the German Data Forum, we started to gather information on these topics. One year after the initial panel discussion, the hot off the press booklet was presented at this year’s annual meeting of the Verein für Socialpolitik two weeks ago.

Read the rest of this entry »


New release of Research Data MANTRA (Management Training)

Posted: September 17th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Data Sharing, found on the net, Research Data | Tags: , , | Comments Off on New release of Research Data MANTRA (Management Training)

250_flickr_highlander411_241420247_c80c18347bThe Research Data MANTRA course is an open, online training course that provides instruction in good practice in research data management. There are eight interactive learning units on key topics such as data management planning, organising and formatting data, using shared data and licensing your own data, as well as four data handling tutorials with open datasets for use in R, SPSS, NVivo and ArcGIS.
This fourth release of MANTRA has been revised and systematically updated with new content, videos, reading lists, and interactive quizzes. Three of the data handling tutorials have been rewritten and tested for newer software versions too. Read the rest of this entry »


Do open access articles in economics have a citation advantage?

Posted: July 9th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: found on the net, journals | Tags: , | 3 Comments »

oa_logo_cc0The two economists Klaus Wohlrabe and Daniel Birkmaier (both from the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich) have published a new working paper in which they analyse the impact of open access publishing in economics on citations.

Their sample consists of articles from 2005 from 13 economic journals (including the top five journals). In addition to standard mean comparisons Wohlrabe and Birkmaier also use a negative-binomial regression model with several covariates to control for potential selection effects and quality bias. For their analysis they used citation data from three different databases, namely the Web of Science, RePEc and Google Scholar.

The results they retrieved are very interisting and might light the debate on open access publishing in academia.

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EDaWaX receives two more years of funding!

Posted: June 25th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: EDaWaX, Projects | Tags: , , | 1 Comment »

300_jes_mugley_flick_com_lemur success kidWe are very happy to announce that our research funding organisation, the German Research Foundation (DFG), has granted another two years of funding for our project.

In their final report, based on the good results of the project’s first funding phase, the reviewers concluded that EDaWaX’s planning for expanding the pilot application and for undertaking a detailed analysis of journals in business studies should be supported with “high”, respectively “highest priority.” Read the rest of this entry »


Goettingen University: Project fosters Replication in Economics

Posted: June 3rd, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Projects | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

300_med_miracleThere are many good reasons why we should replicate scientific findings. In his article “Open Access Economics Journals and the Market for Reproducible Economic Research“, the economist B.D. McCullough (2009) lists some of the reasons why replicable research is crucial for science:

„[…]replication ensures that the method used to produce the results is known. Whether the results are correct or not is another matter, but unless everyone knows how the results were produced, their correctness cannot be assessed. Replicable research is subject to the scientific principle of verification; non-replicable research cannot be verified. Second, and more importantly, replicable research speeds scientific progress. We are all familiar with Newton’s quote, ‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ […] Third, researchers will have an incentive to avoid sloppiness. […] Fourth, the incidence of fraud will decrease.“ (p.118)

More recently, the case of the US-economists Rogoff and Reinhart clearly illustrated the need for replications to be much more common in science and scientific education. But… Read the rest of this entry »