Section for Translational Medical Ethics, Clinical Cooperation Unit Applied Tumor Immunity, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2024 Feb 8;19(2):e0296956. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296956. eCollection 2024.
Data sharing is commonly seen as beneficial for science but is not yet common practice. Research funding agencies are known to play a key role in promoting data sharing, but German funders' data sharing policies appear to lag behind in international comparison. This study aims to answer the question of how German data sharing experts inside and outside funding agencies perceive and evaluate German funders' data sharing policies and overall efforts to promote data sharing.
This study is based on sixteen guided expert interviews with representatives of German funders and German research data experts from stakeholder organisations, who shared their perceptions of German' funders efforts to promote data sharing. By applying the method of qualitative content analysis to our interview data, we categorise and describe noteworthy aspects of the German data sharing policy landscape and illustrate our findings with interview passages.
We present our findings in five sections to distinguish our interviewees' perceptions on a) the status quo of German funders' data sharing policies, b) the role of funders in promoting data sharing, c) current and potential measures by funders to promote data sharing, d) general barriers to those measures, and e) the implementation of more binding data sharing requirements.
Although funders are perceived to be important promoters and facilitators of data sharing throughout our interviews, only few German funding agencies have data sharing policies in place. Several interviewees stated that funders could do more, for example by providing incentives for data sharing or by introducing more concrete policies. Our interviews suggest the academic freedom of grantees is widely perceived as an obstacle for German funders in introducing mandatory data sharing requirements. However, some interviewees stated that stricter data sharing requirements could be justified if data sharing is a part of good scientific practice.
数据共享通常被认为对科学有益，但尚未成为普遍做法。研究资助机构被认为在促进数据共享方面发挥着关键作用，但与国际比较相比，德国资助者的数据共享政策似乎落后。本研究旨在回答以下问题：德国资助机构内外的数据共享专家如何看待和评估德国资助者的数据共享政策以及整体促进数据共享的努力。
本研究基于对来自利益相关者组织的德国资助者和德国研究数据专家的 16 次有指导的专家访谈，这些专家分享了他们对德国资助者促进数据共享努力的看法。通过对我们的访谈数据应用定性内容分析方法，我们对德国数据共享政策领域的显著方面进行分类和描述，并通过访谈片段说明我们的发现。
我们在五个部分呈现我们的发现，以区分我们的受访者对德国资助者数据共享政策的现状的看法，包括：a）德国资助者数据共享政策的现状，b）资助者在促进数据共享方面的作用，c）资助者目前和潜在的促进数据共享的措施，d）这些措施的一般障碍，以及 e）实施更具约束力的数据共享要求。
尽管在我们的访谈中，资助者被认为是数据共享的重要推动者和促进者，但只有少数德国资助机构制定了数据共享政策。几位受访者表示，资助者可以做更多的工作，例如提供数据共享的激励措施或引入更具体的政策。我们的访谈表明，受资助者的学术自由被广泛认为是德国资助者在引入强制性数据共享要求方面的障碍。然而，一些受访者表示，如果数据共享是良好科学实践的一部分，那么更严格的数据共享要求是合理的。
