APA Explains: Data Sharing

Data sharing is one of the most important ways to promote scientific progress and encourage a culture of openness and accountability in research.

Shared data facilitate everything from replication and reanalysis to exploration of new research questions.

Many funders also have data sharing requirements. The National Institutes of Health, for example, require a data sharing statement for proposals requesting a certain level of funding.

The APA ethical principles state that psychologists should freely share published data with peers requesting access for the purposes of verification or reanalysis.

Actively placing data in a public repository makes this process easier for all parties involved.

Data sharing also expands the pool of individuals who can conduct research. For researchers who are geographically dispersed or have limited resources, openly and freely accessible data help foster scientific discovery.

An excellent example comes from studies of Zika virus.

At the start of the 2016 outbreak, University of Wisconsin researchers investigating monkeys infected with Zika made their research data publicopens in new window as soon as it became available. These efforts helped accelerate the management of a critical public health emergency.

Of course, there may be limitations on sharing.

Researchers with proprietary datasets or whose participants are easily identifiable might be restricted in what they can share.

Primary qualitative and quantitative data that correspond to what is reported in a published article should be made digitally available in a trustworthy repository.

Shared data should be FAIR — that is, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusableopens in new window.

Guidelines from the Center for Open Science suggest that data storage must be guaranteed in perpetuity.

Data sharers must also provide a comprehensive codebook to ensure their results are usable and interpretable by others.

Sharing should be considered from initial study design all the way through to publication.

For example, researchers should comment on secondary use when crafting participant consent forms. Ideally, all primary data necessary to reproduce published results are made available upon manuscript acceptance for publication.

Researchers producing primary data have the right of first use and may be able to set an embargo for secondary use.

Secondary users are expected to appropriately credit data sharers whenever their data are reused or referenced.

To facilitate sharing, APA has created a repositoryopens in new window in partnership with the Center for Open Science.

But this is just one of many available options. The Registry of Research Data Repositoriesopens in new window can help researchers identify a repository that best fits their needs.