1.
Office of Scholarly Communication
So, what’s it all about then?
Why we share data
Jisc Research Data Network meeting
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University
6 September 2016
Dr Danny Kingsley @dannykay68
Head of Scholarly Communication
University of Cambridge

2.
Why are we here?
What
Where
When
Why
How

3.
Sharing data
What
Where
When
Why
How
Making data available for
other researchers
Openly accessible
repositories
As close to publication
as possible
The focus of
today’s meeting
What this talk is about –
contextualise

4.
Drivers for data sharing
Image by Danny Kingsley

5.
Drivers for data sharing
Image by Danny Kingsley
Funders –
return on investment
+ better quality data

6.
Drivers for data sharing
Image by Danny Kingsley
Funders –
return on investment
+ better quality data
Researchers –
cultural expectations
the ‘right’ thing to do

7.
Blockers to good research
Image by Danny Kingsley

8.
Data Excuse Bingo
Data Excuse Bingo created by @jenny_molloy

9.
Incompatible!
Data Excuse Bingo created by @jenny_molloy

10.
‘My data is not very interesting’
• 2005 - Professor Simon Deakin part of a team
doing research on the effects of legal reforms
to shareholder, creditor and worker rights
made their datasets available
• To date, ~50 academic papers published re-
using the datasets
• Organisations include: the International
Labour Organization,Asian Development
Bank, andTheWorld Bank

11.
‘Someone might steal/plagiarise it’
‘A second concern held by some is that a new class
of research person will emerge — people who had
nothing to do with the design and execution of the
study but use another group’s data for their own
ends, possibly stealing from the research
productivity planned by the data gatherers, or even
use the data to try to disprove what the original
investigators had posited.There is concern among
some front-line researchers that the system will be
taken over by what some researchers have
characterized as “research parasites.”’
EDITORIAL ‘Data Sharing’, Dan L. Longo, M.D., and Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D. N Engl J
Med 2016; 374:276-277January 21, 2016 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1516564

12.
Case study
• Cambridge is a partner institution in the Jisc
Data Asset Framework (DAF) surveys
– Contributed to survey question development
– Organised ethical clearance
– Heavily promoted the survey
– 440 responses out of the total of 1185 (37% of the
responses) came from Cambridge

13.
Partners?
We broke our own rule – we did not discuss this
before-hand and assumed an arrangement that
didn’t exist. A beginners’ mistake.
We would have used a non-proprietary
repository.

14.
Risk of scooping?
• And we would have waited. (To give the team
time to write a couple of papers)
https://figshare.com/articles/Data_asset_framework_DAF_survey_results_2016/3796305/2

15.
The bigger problem
This is what I
am going to
discuss for the
rest of this
presentation
Researchers are
in a rat race to
stay ahead
Image by Danny Kingsley

16.
Series of blogs published during July &August
https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?page_id=2#OpenResearch
The Case for Open Research

17.
The coin in the realm of academia
Image Flickr – Leo Reynolds

18.
Journal Impact Factor
Impact Factor for 2015 is
– Number of citations in 2014 of articles published
in 2012-2013 divided by:
– Number of articles published in the journal in
2012-2013 Image by Danny Kingsley

19.
Backlash
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/hate-journal-impact-
factors-new-study-gives-you-one-more-reason

20.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/hate-journal-impact-
factors-new-study-gives-you-one-more-reason

21.
San Francisco Declaration on ResearchAssessment
• Themes
– The need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics,
such as Journal Impact Factors, in funding, appointment,
and promotion considerations;
– The need to assess research on its own merits rather than
on the basis of the journal in which the research is
published; and
– The need to capitalize on the opportunities provided by
online publication (such as relaxing unnecessary limits on
the number of words, figures, and references in articles,
and exploring new indicators of significance and impact).
• http://www.ascb.org/dora/
• >12,000 individuals & >800 organisations

22.
This is one of the big problems
Image by Danny Kingsley
The insistence on the need to publish novel results in
high impact journals is creating a multitude of problems
with the scientific endeavour

23.
Hyperauthorship
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803
24 of the 33 pages of this paper listed the over 5,000 authors (nine
pages are the paper itself)

24.
Storm of protest
http://www.nature.com/news/physics-paper-sets-record-with-more-than-5-000-authors-
1.17567

25.
Storm of protest
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/long-author-lists-on-research-papers-are-
threatening-the-academic-work-system-10279748.html

26.
Storm of protest
https://theconversation.com/long-lists-are-eroding-the-value-of-
being-a-scientific-author-42094

27.
Storm of protest
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/mass-authorship-
destroying-credibility-papers

28.
Speaking of other ways of measuring…
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803
This Altmetrics score of 579 is “in the top 5% of all research
outputs scored by Altmetric”

29.
Blogged because of author list!
https://aps.altmetric.com/details/3997327/blogs

30.
Reproducibility
Scientists are very rarely rewarded for being
right, they are rewarded for publishing in
certain journals and for getting grants.
Image by Danny Kingsley

31.
The nine circles of scientific hell
(with apologies to Dante and xkcd)
Neuroskeptic Perspectives on Psychological Science
2012;7:643-644
Copyright © by Association for Psychological Science

32.
Crisis?
Nature, 533, 452–454 (26 May 2016) doi:10.1038/533452a
http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-
reproducibility-1.19970

33.
Oh dear
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

34.
Retraction
• According to RetractionWatch
http://retractionwatch.com/ there are 500-
600 retractions a year
• Only 5% of publicly available versions (non-
publisher websites) of retracted works have a
retraction statement attached
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PM
C3411255/

35.
Correlation between impact factor and retraction index.
Ferric C. Fang, and Arturo Casadevall Infect. Immun.
2011;79:3855-3859

36.
Time for a change
‘Richard Smith: Another step towards the post-journal world’ BMJ blog, 12
Jul, 16
Image by Danny Kingsley

37.
Distribute the load
Photo from Flickr – by Andy

38.
Register trials
https://clinicaltrials.gov/

39.
Peer review of methodology
http://neurochambers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/changing-culture-of-scientific.html

40.
Increased transparency
Cell Press - redesigned methods section to help authors clearly communicate how
experiments are conducted. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/cp-
cpt082516.php

41.
Open data
• “Publicly funded research data are a public
good, produced in the public interest, which
should be made openly available with as few
restrictions as possible in a timely and
responsible manner.”
• RCUK Common Principles on Data
Policyhttp://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/datapol
icy/

42.
Science Matters
https://www.sciencematters.io/

43.
Putting money where their mouth is
• Wellcome Open Research
wellcomeopenresearch.org/
• Authors can “rapidly publish all outputs from
their research – everything from standard
research articles and data sets to case reports,
protocols, and null and negative results.”

44.
It is all connected
• Increasing access to data is part of a much
bigger agenda to overhaul how research is
shared, assessed and ultimately practiced.
• You are part of a revolution.
Image by Danny Kingsley

45.
Questions/Discussion
• Thanks!
Dr Danny Kingsley
Head of Scholarly Communication
University of Cambridge
@dannykay68