[open-science] A Reputation Economy: Results from an Empirical Survey on Academic Data Sharing

[kshitiz khanal]

Yes, interesting indeed.

Understanding academia as a reputation economy hints of headway to
increased research collaboration.

It could be interesting to conduct research on other motivations apart from
reputation. I wonder if there have been some already.


-Kshitiz

On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 12:49 AM, Florence Piron <
florence.piron at com.ulaval.ca> wrote:

>  Very interesting study.
>
> http://www.ratswd.de/dl/RatSWD_WP_246.pdf
>
> Abstract:
>
>   Academic data sharing is a way for researchers to collaborate and
> thereby meet the needs of an increasingly complex research landscape. It
> enables researchers to verify results and to pursuit new research questions
> with “old” data. It is therefore not surprising that data sharing is
> advocated by funding agencies, journals, and researchers alike. We surveyed
> 2661 individual academic researchers across all disciplines on their
> dealings with data, their publication practices, and motives for sharing or
> withholding research data. The results for 1564 valid responses show that
> researchers across disciplines recognise the benefit of secondary research
> data for their own work and for scientific progress as a whole—still they
> only practice it in moderation. An explanation for this evidence could be
> an academic system that is not driven by monetary incentives, nor the
> desire for scientific progress, but by individual reputation—expressed in
> (high ranked journal) publications. We label this system a Reputation
> Economy. This special economy explains our findings that show that
> researchers have a nuanced idea how to provide adequate formal recognition
> for making data available to others—namely data citations. We conclude that
> data sharing will only be widely adopted among research professionals if
> sharing pays in form of reputation. Thus, policy measures that intend to
> foster research collaboration need to understand academia as a reputation
> economy. Successful measures must value intermediate products, such as
> research data, more highly than it is the case now.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> open-science mailing list
> open-science at lists.okfn.org
> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-science
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/attachments/20150505/8a2f0f83/attachment-0003.html>