Search

Poor provision of information and communication technologies in low/middle-income countries represents a concern for promoting open data. This is often framed as a 'digital divide' and addressed through initiatives that increase the availability of information and communication technologies to researchers based in low-resourced environments, as well as the amount of resources freely accessible online. Using qualitative empirical data from a study of lab-based research in Africa we highlight the limitations of this framing and emphasize the range of additional factors necessary to effectively utilize data available online. We adapt Sen's 'capabilities approach' to highlight the distinction between simply making resources available, and fostering researchers' ability to use them. This provides an alternative orientation that highlights the persistence of deep inequalities within the seemingly egalitarian-inspired open data landscape. We propose that the extent and manner of future data sharing will hinge on the ability to respond to the heterogeneity of research environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents how biomedical researchers in the United Kingdom understand and enact the idea of “openness.” This is of particular interest to researchers and science policy worldwide in view of the recent adoption of pioneering policies on Open Science and Open Access by the U.K. government—policies whose impact on and implications for research practice are in need of urgent evaluation, so as to decide on their eventual implementation elsewhere. This study is based on 22 in-depth interviews with U.K. researchers in systems biology, synthetic biology, and bioinformatics, which were conducted between September 2013 and February 2014. Through an analysis of the interview transcripts, we identify seven core themes that characterize researchers’ understanding of openness in science and nine factors that shape the practice of openness in research. Our findings highlight the implications that Open Science policies can have for research processes and outcomes and provide recommendations for enhancing their content, effectiveness, and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction outlines the contents of the special collection "Open Data and Africa", which documents the goals and aspirations associated with Open Data means in Africa today: what opportunities they offer, what challenges they pose and what the implications follow from the increasing political and institutional support for this concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the clear demand for open data sharing, its implementation within plant science is still limited. This is, at least in part, because open data-sharing raises several unanswered questions and challenges to current research practices. In this commentary, some of the challenges encountered by plant researchers at the bench when generating, interpreting, and attempting to disseminate their data have been highlighted. The difficulties involved in sharing sequencing, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics data are reviewed. The benefits and drawbacks of three data-sharing venues currently available to plant scientists are identified and assessed: (i) journal publication; (ii) university repositories; and (iii) community and project-specific databases. It is concluded that community and project-specific databases are the most useful to researchers interested in effective data sharing, since these databases are explicitly created to meet the researchers’ needs, support extensive curation, and embody a heightened awareness of what it takes to make data reuseable by others. Such bottom-up and community-driven approaches need to be valued by the research community, supported by publishers, and provided with long-term sustainable support by funding bodies and government. At the same time, these databases need to be linked to generic databases where possible, in order to be discoverable to the majority of researchers and thus promote effective and efficient data sharing. As we look forward to a future that embraces open access to data and publications, it is essential that data policies, data curation, data integration, data infrastructure, and data funding are linked together so as to foster data access and research productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]