Data sharing in science: the context of an opportunity

Abstract

The issue of sharing research data has always been present in the scientific community; however, the current state of technology has revived the debate. For this reason, and following a special issue of the journal Nature on the topic, we review the main features of this practice. First, we introduce the existing arguments for and against data sharing; in the next section we show how some agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (USA) already require their funded investigators to make their study data freely available to the rest of the scientific community. In this context, agencies understand that data sharing maximizes the return on public investment in R & D. In the conclusions we discuss the role that university libraries can play in data preservation, noting that we have an excellent opportunity to acquire new responsibilities.