Data sharing policies for life science research working

The rising popularity of data sharing policies for life science researchers are having an impact, according to a study published in PLOS One.

Researchers from Drexel University, Brandeis University and Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed a 2013 survey of more than 1,600 life science researchers to determine the effects of sharing policies of funding agencies and journals.

“We find that recently enacted data sharing policies and new sharing infrastructure and tools have had a sizable effect on encouraging data sharing,” wrote the authors.

Researchers reported that third-party repositories and online supplements, as well as data sharing requirements of agencies particularly the National Institutes of Health and the National Human Genome Research Institute, were having a large effect on facilitating data sharing.

Despite this progress, still one-third of grant reviewers placed no weight on data sharing in their reviews.

“These patterns suggest that although most of these new policies have been effective, there is still room for policy improvement,” according to the study.