The Stickiness of Scientific Data

Researchers are generating unprecedented volumes of data. As the expectations of big scientific data grow, the expectations on the potential of sharing it grow as well. Government-funding entities have placed data sharing at the crux of scientific policy. Yet, considering the apparent barriers to its wide adoption, we lack a recent overview of whether researchers share their data, how and what mechanisms enable research data sharing (why). Our study engages in a mixed-method design by combining survey data collected in 2016 and 2018; and qualitative data from two case studies sequentially sampled within two scientific communities: high-energy physics and molecular biology. As a lens to understand the factors behind data sharing practices, we draw upon the notion of epistemic cultures and the collective action theory perspective to shed light on the incentives and deterrents that scientists confront when considering contributions to the collective goods of data sharing.