Swedish National Data Service's Strategy for Sharing and Mediating Data Practices of Open Access to and Reuse of Research Data – The State of the Art in Sweden 2009 Carina Carlhed, Iris Alfredsson IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Committee for Research Infrastructures (KFI) formulates long-term strategies handles resource allocation for expensive scientific equipment, large research facilities and extensive databases deals with Swedish interests in, and funding of, various national and international research infrastructures. The overall aim is to provide better conditions for Swedish researchers by ensuring access to high quality infrastructures. Producer of Swedish Research Council's Guide to Infrastructure IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Database InfraStructure Committe (DISC) promote the development of an effective infrastructure for sharing research data resources in Sweden aims to ensure that researchers have rapid, easy, and free-of- charge access to research databases of high quality IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Transforming SSD into SND “SND shall meet the needs of the research community for data on empirical research in the areas of social science, humanities, and medicine. Actions include providing technical, legal, educational, and other administrative resources for collecting, storing, and distributing data for research.” IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Strategic areas SND IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle Quality ensuring Technical edvelopment & infrastructure Collaboration Data Localize Collect & preserve Document & process Maintain & mediate Services Information Support Guidance Social sciencesHumanities Epidemiology/ public health research

Important task for SND to strengthen the altruistic reception of the importance of data sharing and open access among researchers IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Legal barriers Possessiv barriers IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Activities to promote data sharing Influence research financiers support researchers through the whole research process be present in different research contexts and to inform about the benefits of sharing data IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Feed-back from the research community IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

The SND surveys Two surveys, researchers in Humanities and Social sciences, 1) Swedish professors and 2) doctoral students questionnaires Approx. 80 items covering for example; the researchers affiliations, domain of discipline, gender, age, familiarities with research policies and ventures, and opinions to use, re-use, archiving practices of digital research data Response rates: professors 38 % (N=549) and doctoral students 28 % (N=1147) Comparation with a Finnish survey from 2006 IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Results and conclusions… descriptive and presented tentatively the researchers’ attitudes towards current ventures and strivings in research infrastructures are predominantly positive important to raise issues of guidelines concerning accessibility to digital research data engage researchers and relevant authorities in creating arenas for discussing and shaping research infrastructure for the future IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Practices of re-using digital data (professors, n= , 85-87%) alwayscommon not common nor unusualunusualneverdon’t know 1 used as empirical material 34 (7%) 195 (41%) 121 (25%) 68 (14%) 6 (1%)51 (11%) 2 kept with the researcher without no further documentation 16 (3%) 198 (43%) 71 (15%) 61 (13%) 15 (3%)104 (22%) 3 archived at the university, described in a catalogue 8 (2%) 40 (9%) 71 (15%) 158 (34%) 66 (14%)124 (27%) 4 shared to a data service (like SND) 6 (1%) 29 (6%) 37 (8%) 143 (31%) 91 (20%)158 (34%) 5 destroyed after analysis and publication 1 (0%) 13 (3%) 59 (13%) 140 (30%) 88 (19%)163 (35%) 6 re-used for other research or PhD work 8 (2%) 94 (20%) 170 (37%) 78 (17%) 12 (3%)102 (22%) 7 used in undergraduate education 6 (1%) 92 (20%) 176 (38%) 73 (16%) 23 (5%)96 (21%) IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Opinions of benefits of increasing accessibility to data  professors, n= , 69-71%) Very significantFairly significant Fairly insignificantNo benefit 1 reducing ”double work” in data collection 115 (29%)186 (48%)75 (19%)15 (4%) 2 use available resources more effectively 121 (31%)188 (49%)64 (17%)13 (3%) 3 increase communication and collaboration within the research society 92 (24%)215 (56%)66 (17%)8 (2%) 4 enabling scrutiny (and repeatability) of research results 130 (33%)196 (50%)57 (15%)7 (2%) 5 improving the quality of research 102 (26%)185 (47%)84 (21%)20 (5%) 6 improving the quality of teaching 60 (15%)162 (42%)140 (36%)28 (7%) 7 enhancing diversity of research designs 77 (20%)189 (49%)108 (28%)15 (4%) 8 more equal access to data for different groups 114 (29%)181 (46%)75 (19%)20 (5%) IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Results and conclusions… Key actors - the universities and university colleges themselves and The Swedish Research Council (VR) and The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS). effective interventions for enhancing accessibility to digital data 1)research grants should include funds for preparing the data for sharing and archiving 2)Making data accessible for the use by the scientific community is acknowledged to be scientific merit. 3)more education about life cycles of digital data and research ethics. IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Obstacles to re-using data and sharing important reasons for not reusing digital data - Swedish researchers emphasize ethical, juridical, technical aspects and issues quality of data as more problematic than the Finnish researchers. obstacles to sharing digital data – Swedish professors regard deficiency of resources for researchers to document and arrange their data to reusable conditions, as the most difficult obstacle to sharing digital data together with lacking guidelines to documentation, – while the Finnish professors reported that it was the situation when the respondents were not informed that their contributions should be used in the research society generally. They share this concern with the Swedish doctoral students. IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Sharing digital data… the professors seems to be more eager to share data than the doctoral students. A large proportion of the total group was also expressing doubts in sharing data, probably because uncertainty and lack of sufficient guidelines. Researchers in Humanities however, were those who distinguished themselves as potential “sharers”. IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle

Finally… acknowledge the researchers’ positive orientation about e-science put forward these survey results of opinions of digital research data and barriers to share and re- use At last, the results of these surveys have to be acknowledged and seriously taken care of in understanding the obstacles and challenges we face in order to achieve a sufficient and approved research infrastructure IASSIST/IFDO Mobile data and the life cycle