Conference paper
The International Development Research Center (IDRC) is a Canadian Crown Corporation that funds development research globally. IDRC is investigating the implementation of a data management and sharing proposal. As part of this process IDRC commissioned a project to investigate the issues involved with implementing data sharing and management policies in the context of development research.
The research proposal is structured a pilot project to conduct open data pilot case studies with seven IDRC grantees to develop and implement open data management and sharing plans. The results of the case studies will serve to refine guidelines for the implementation of development research funders’ open research data policies. The case studies will examine the scale of legal, ethical, cultural and technical challenges that might limit the sharing of data from IDRC projects.
The panel session will discuss and reflect on the initial findings of the pilot project. Some of our initial findings are that the diversity of data management needs are not well served by current tools and that it is the capacity of funders to support policy rather than the capacity of researchers that can be the limiting factor in delivering on the aspirations of data sharing policy. The session will discuss progress and challenges for three of the projects. In particular we will discuss how the the aspirations of funders to change the culture of researchers is not well served by current policy design.
The IDRC Data Sharing Pilot
Given that there is a close link between research data and research publications, and that data constitutes a primary form of research output, it is appropriate that research funders’ open access policies address the issue of open research data. Open research data is free to use, modify, and share for any purpose by anyone. The significance of primary data gathered in research projects across domains is its high potential for not only academic reuse, but its value beyond academic purposes, particularly for governments, SME, and civil society. More importantly, the availability of these data provides an ideal opportunity to test the key premise underlying open research data — that when it is made publicly accessible in easily reusable formats, it can foster new knowledge and discovery, and encourage collaboration among researchers and organizations.
Research funding organizations need to be aware of and have an understanding of the opportunities and challenges of open research data policies. For example, realistic and costeffective strategies for funded researchers to collect, manage, and store the various types of data resulting from their research are unclear. Furthermore, publishing open research data requires skillsets that researchers may have yet to develop. Finally, intellectual property rights issues and privacy concerns are rife in the release of data as well as broader ethical issues around the rights over and “ownership” of collected data. These issues relate to data sharing in general but are particularly challenging in the context of development research.
Very little work has been done examining open data policies in the context of development research specifically. The pilot project will serve to inform open access to research data policies of development research funders through pilot testing open data management plan guidelines with a set of IDRC grantees.
The Pilot Projects
The IDRC pilot brings together seven projects covering a range of geographies and subject areas as well as raising their own unique issues of ethics and data sharing. The group are intended to provide a varied landscape with which to work.
Methodology of the Pilot
The overarching research question is: What are the essential components of an effective open access to research data policy for development research funders?
We will attempt to answer this question by generating, testing and refining a set of open data implementation guidelines through a series of pilot studies using the framework of Hodson and Molloy to guide our analysis. We will also test the completeness of framework with respect to the specific issues of development research funders.
The project includes three components
1. A stateofthe art review on open access data management plans.
2. Eight open data pilot studies with volunteer IDRC grantees
3. Report and recommendations for IDRC and development funders on data sharing policies and guidelines to support project data sharing.
Initial Findings: Implementation with the Pilot Projects
While we are still in the early stages of working with the pilot projects to implement Data Management and Sharing Plans we already have some striking findings. For most of the projects existing commonly used tools for Data Management Planning are not fit for purpose. In particular tools focus on high level and abstract questions that are not clear to researchers. We have found some initial success in focussing on much more concrete issues motivatedby creating a “data inventory” that then focusses attention on the issues of what will be done with specific expected data outputs. This suggests some approaches for the design of next generation DMP tools.
More generally the disparate nature of the pilot projects has emphasised that data management planning is a complex and contextual process and is not well served by templated questions and planning procedures. Many of the groups have struggled to apply standardised questions in their specific context. When prompted, each project already has a sophisticated understanding of the issues arising from their data collection/production within their own context. Ideally a funder and/or institution would provide sufficient support to prompt a project to apply this understanding to the data management planning process. In
practice this level of support is rarely available. It is being providing within the pilot project but is not scaleable for implementation across a funder portfolio.
Initial Findings: Culture change or compliance culture?
In a forthcoming review we investigated data sharing policy and implementation across a range of funders. The most striking finding thus far in the pilot is the tension between the momentum in policy development towards requiring, and in some cases auditing, data management planning and data sharing, and a concern that these requirements are actually damaging to the process of cultural change amongst researchers towards data sharing as an element of research practice.
With limited resources it will be crucial to develop tools and design the scope of policies and expectations on researchers so as to best align researcher and funder motivations. Simply requiring data management planning at proposal stage without providing support will likely lead to the production of documents that are at best ignored. Providing ongoing support will be resource intensive. Identifying the best point at which to apply available resources, and the scope of data the funder is most concerned with, will therefore be important.
Preliminary Findings
The challenge for funders in developing policy is balancing aspiration, resources, external political pressures and the ability of the research community to act. Hodson and Molloy (2014) provide an excellent template for identifying the key elements a policy on research data management and sharing should address. This should form the basis for policy design efforts.
Around any policy development a funder should consider its overall program for supporting RDM and RDS. We recommend framing such a program as one of supporting cultural changes. Crucially these changes need to include both the cultures of the disparate research communities the funder supports as well as the funder themselves. Providing clarity on the funder’s motivations and how these align, and do not, with those of the community will be valuable. Understanding the capacities, capabilities and interests of those within the funder, and how this might need to change is also important.
There are three specific general recommendations for further development by the community.