Universidad de Navarra, Department of Environmental Biology, Biodiversity and Environmental Quality Data Analysis Group, 31008, Pamplona, Spain.
Database (Oxford). 2018 Jan 1;2018. doi: 10.1093/database/bay033.
Researchers are embracing the open access movement to facilitate unrestricted availability of scientific results. One sign of this willingness is the steady increase in data freely shared online, which has prompted a corresponding increase in the number of papers using such data. Publishing datasets is a time-consuming process that is often seen as a courtesy, rather than a necessary step in the research process. Making data accessible allows further research, provides basic information for decision-making and contributes to transparency in science. Nevertheless, the ease of access to heaps of data carries a perception of 'free lunch for all', and the work of data publishers is largely going unnoticed. Acknowledging such a significant effort involving the creation, management and publication of a dataset remains a flimsy, not well established practice in the scientific community. In a meta-analysis of published literature, we have observed various dataset citation practices, but mostly (92%) consisting of merely citing the data repository rather than the data publisher. Failing to recognize the work of data publishers might lead to a decrease in the number of quality datasets shared online, compromising potential research that is dependent on the availability of such data. We make an urgent appeal to raise awareness about this issue.
研究人员正在积极拥抱开放获取运动，以促进科学成果的无障碍获取。这种意愿的一个迹象是，在线免费共享的数据稳步增加，这促使使用这些数据的论文数量相应增加。发布数据集是一个耗时的过程，通常被视为一种礼貌，而不是研究过程中的必要步骤。使数据易于访问可以促进进一步的研究，为决策提供基本信息，并有助于科学的透明度。然而，大量数据的便捷访问带来了一种“所有人都有免费午餐”的感觉，而数据发布者的工作在很大程度上未被注意到。在科学界，承认涉及数据集的创建、管理和发布的这种重要努力仍然是一个脆弱的、尚未确立的惯例。在对已发表文献的荟萃分析中，我们观察到了各种数据集引用实践，但主要（92%）只是引用了数据存储库，而不是数据发布者。如果不承认数据发布者的工作，可能会导致在线共享的高质量数据集数量减少，从而影响依赖这些数据可用性的潜在研究。我们紧急呼吁提高对此问题的认识。
