Malaysian researchers on open data: The first national survey on awareness, practices and attitudes
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Abstract
The study investigates the awareness, practices and attitudes of researchers in regard to open data – i.e. the sharing and reuse of research data – which is part of a larger study that concentrated on the scholarly communication readiness of Malaysian researchers in Open Science. The data were gathered by means of a survey which obtained 135 responses from researchers based in five research universities in Malaysia. The main conclusions are: (a) the researchers are aware of open data, yet, they are not practising it as shown in the mean scores, as well as in their responses towards the statements asked; (b) unclear information on data privacy policy, misuse of data, and the fear of losing publication opportunity are part of disincentives for data sharing. The requisite for open data understanding, practices and attitudinal change is needed for these may impact research practices, government policies and scientific knowledge, leading to research transparency and accountability, social benefit and economic growth. This paper concludes with a discussion that policies incentivizing the sharing and reuse of open data, as well as tools and guidance to support data sharing, and a strong incentives and rewards to implement open data among researchers, should be encouraged. Future studies should look into the importance of rewards for data sharing among researchers’ institutions. Studies bridging the gap between policy and practices of open data should be examined, if true openness in research is to be established in Malaysia.
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Hodonu-Wusu, J. O., Noorhidawati, A., & Abrizah, A. (2020). Malaysian researchers on open data: The first national survey on awareness, practices and attitudes. Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science, 25(2), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.22452/mjlis.vol25no2.1
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References
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Campbell, E. G., Clarridge, B. R., Gokhale, N. N., Birenbaum, L., Hilgartner, S., Holtzman, N. A. and Blumenthal, D. 2002. Data withholding in academic genetics – evidence from a national survey. Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 287 no. 4:473-480, Available at: doi: 10.1001/jama.287.4.473.
Corti, L. and Van den Eynden, V. 2015. Learning to manage and share data: jump-starting the research methods curriculum. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18:5, 545-559, Available at: DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2015.106262
Creswell, J. W. 2008. Educational research: Planning conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (3rd ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Crosas, M. 2012. A data sharing story. Journal of eScience Librarianship, Vol. 1, no. 3: Article 7. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7191/jeslib2012.1020
Crosas, M., King, G., Honaker. and Sweeney, L. 2015. Automating open science for big data. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 659, no. 1: 260-273.
Curty, R.G., Crowston, K., Specht, A., Grant, B.W. and Dalton, E.D. 2017. Attitudes and norms affecting scientists’ data reuse. PloS One, Vol. 12, no. 12: e0189288. Available at: doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189288.
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Fane, B. 2019. What is the state of open data in 2019. In Digital Science Report: The state of open data 2019, a selection of analyses and articles about open data, curated by Figshare. London, UK: Digital Science.
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Jahnke, L., Asher, A. and Keralis, S. D. C. 2012. The problem of data. Council on Library and Information Resources. Available at: http://www.clir.org/wp-content/ uploads/ sites/6/pub154.pdf.
James, L. 2013. Defining open data. Open knowledge foundation blog. Available at: http://blog.okfn.org/2013/10/03/defining-open-data/.
Kim, Y. and Stanton, J.M. 2016. Institutional and individual factors affecting scientists’ data-sharing behaviors: a multilevel analysis. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 67 no. 4: 776-799, Available at: doi: 10.1002/asi.23424.
Kim, Y. and Adler, M. 2015. Social scientists’ data sharing behaviors: investigating the roles of individual motivations, institutional pressures, and data repositories. International Journal of Information Management, Vol. 35 no. 4: 408-418.
Kim, Y. 2017. Fostering scientists’ data sharing behavior via data repositories, journal supplements and personal communication methods. Information Processing & Management, Vol. 53, no. 4: 871-855. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2017.03.003.
King, R. D., Liakala, M., Lu, C., Oliver, S. G. and Soldalova, L. N. 2011. On the formalization and reuse of scientific research. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Vol. 8:1440-48. Available at: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2011.0029.
Krejcie, R. V. and Morgan, D. W. 1970. Determining sample size for research activities. Educational and Psychological Measurement, Vol. 30, no. 10: 607-610. Available at: Doi:10.1177/001316447003000308.
Lindemann, N. 2018. What’s the average survey response rate? [2018 benchmark]. SurveyAnyplace. Available at: https://surveyanyplace.com/average-survey-response-rate/.
Malaysia. 2015. Eleventh Malaysia Plan 2016-2020: Anchoring growth on people. Putrajaya: Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister’s Department, Malaysia. 372p.
Martinez, C.I.P. and Poveda, A.C. 2018 Knowledge and perceptions of open science among researchers—A case study for Colombia. Information, Vol. 11, no. 9, 292. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/info9110292.
National Research Council. 1985. Sharing research data. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17226/2033.
National Research Council. 2009. Beyond ‘Fortress America’: National security controls on science and technology in a globalized world. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Nicholas, D., Watkinson, A., Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Rodriguez Bravo, B., Xu, J., Abrizah, A., Swigon, M. and Herman, E. 2017. Early career researchers: scholarly behaviour and the prospect of change. Learned Publishing. Vol. 30, no 2: 157-166. Available at: DOI:10.1002/leap.1098.
Nicholas, D., Watkinson, A., Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Rodríguez Bravo, Bl., Xu, J., Abrizah, A., Swigon, M., Clark, D. and Herman, E. 2019. So, are early career researchers the harbingers of change? Learned Publishing, Vol. 32 no 3: 237-247. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1232
OECD. 2013. OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy: Sweden 2012, OECD Publishing, Paris, Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264184893-en.
Oluwatayo, J. A. 2012. Validity and reliability issues in educational research. Journal of Educational and Social Research, Vol. 2, no. 2: 391-400.
Ostaszewski, M. 2014. Analysis of the attitude within academic and research communities towards open science – quantitative survey. Paper presented at the Conference Opening Science to Meet Future Challenges, Warsaw, Poland, March 11, 2014,16p.
Parry, O. and Mauthner, N. S. 2004. Whose data are they anyway? Practical, legal and ethical issues in archiving qualitative research data. Sociology Vol. 38, no. 1:139-152. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038504039366.
Piwowar, H. A. 2011. Who shares? Who doesn’t? Factors associated with openly archiving raw research data. PLOS ONE, Vol. 6, no. 7: e18657. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018657.
Rafferty, A. E., Jimmieson, N. L., and Armenakis, A. A. 2013. Change readiness: A multilevel review. Journal of Management, Vol. 39, no. 1: 110-135. Available at: doi:10.1177/0149206312457417.
Sayogo, D.S. and Pardo, T.A. 2013. Exploring the determinants of scientific data sharing: Understanding the motivation to publish research data. Government Information Quarterly, Vol. 30, Supplement 1: S19-S31. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.011.
Savage, C.J. and Vickers, A.J. 2009. Empirical study of data sharing by authors publishing in PLoS journals. PLoS ONE, Vol. 4, no. 9: e7078. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007078.
Spies, J.R. 2013. The open science framework: Improving science by making it open and accessible. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia.
Tenopir, C., Allard, S., Douglass, K., Aydinoglu, A. U., Wu, L., Read, E., Manoff, M. and Frame, M. 2011. Data sharing by scientists: Practices and perceptions. PloS ONE, Vol. 6, no. 6: e21101. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021101 PMID: 21738610.
UK Research Council and Innovation. 2015. Guidance on best practice in the management of research data. Available at: https://www.ukri.org/funding/information-for-award-holders/data-policy/common-principles-on-data-policy/.
Verhulst, S.G. and Young, A. 2017. Open data in developing economies: Toward building an evidence based on what works and how. United States Agency for International Development. 148 p. Available at: http://odimpact.org/files/odimpact-developing-economies.pdf.
Vitae European Researchers Framework. 2016. Vitae B10: Early career researchers and employment challenges – learning from Italy and Germany, p.5) Available at https://www.vitae.ac.uk/vitae-publications/reports/vitae-occasional-papers-vol3-b10.pdf/view?searchterm=early+career+researchers.
Wei, J. 2017. Qualitative data sharing in social science. A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of School of Information Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United State.
Weiner, B. 2009. A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, Vol.4, no. 67: 9. Available at: http://www.implementationscience.com/ content/pdf/1748-5908-4-67.pdf.
Wicherts, J. M., Borsboom, D., Kats, J. and Molenaar, D. 2006. The poor availability of psychological research data for reanalysis. American Psychologist, 61:726-28. Doi:10.1037/0003-066X.61.7.726.
Wicherts, J. M., Bakker, M. and Molenaar, D. 2011. Willingness to share research data is related to the strength of the evidence and the quality of reporting of statistical results. PLoS ONE, Vol. 6, no. 11: e26828. Available at: Doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026828.
Williams, M., Bagwell, J. and Zozus, M.N. 2017. Data management plans: the missing perspective. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Vol, 71, no. 7: 130-142.
World Bank Group. 2017. Open data readiness assessment: Malaysia. The Malaysia Development Experience Series, Global Knowledge & Research Hub in Malaysia, Governance Global Practice.
Wouters, P. and Haak, W. 2017. Open data Report: The researcher perspective. Available at: https://www.elsevier.com/about/open-science/research-data/open-data-report.
Zuiderwijk, A. and Spiers, H. 2019. Sharing and re-using open data: A case study of motivations in astrophysics, International Journal of Information Management, Vol. 49: 228-241. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.05.024.
Abrizah, A., Shah, N.A.K. and Nicholas, D. 2019. Malaysian early career researchers on the ethics of scholarly publishing. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, Vol. 24, no. 1: 75-96.
Bezuidenhout, L. and Chakauya, E. 2018. Hidden concerns of sharing research data by low/middle-income country scientists, Global Bioethics, Vol. 29, no. 1: 39-54, Available at: DOI: 10.1080/11287462.2018.1441780.
Campbell, E. G., Clarridge, B. R., Gokhale, N. N., Birenbaum, L., Hilgartner, S., Holtzman, N. A. and Blumenthal, D. 2002. Data withholding in academic genetics – evidence from a national survey. Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 287 no. 4:473-480, Available at: doi: 10.1001/jama.287.4.473.
Corti, L. and Van den Eynden, V. 2015. Learning to manage and share data: jump-starting the research methods curriculum. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18:5, 545-559, Available at: DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2015.106262
Creswell, J. W. 2008. Educational research: Planning conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (3rd ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Crosas, M. 2012. A data sharing story. Journal of eScience Librarianship, Vol. 1, no. 3: Article 7. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7191/jeslib2012.1020
Crosas, M., King, G., Honaker. and Sweeney, L. 2015. Automating open science for big data. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 659, no. 1: 260-273.
Curty, R.G., Crowston, K., Specht, A., Grant, B.W. and Dalton, E.D. 2017. Attitudes and norms affecting scientists’ data reuse. PloS One, Vol. 12, no. 12: e0189288. Available at: doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189288.
Elsevier. 2020. Malaysia - Research excellence and beyond. Available at https://www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence/campaigns/malaysia-research-excellence-and-beyond.
Fane, B. 2019. What is the state of open data in 2019. In Digital Science Report: The state of open data 2019, a selection of analyses and articles about open data, curated by Figshare. London, UK: Digital Science.
Fecher, B, Freisike, S. and Hebing, M. 2015. What drives academic data sharing? PLoS One. Vol. 10, no. 2:e0118053. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118053.
FOSTER. 2017a. Open science definition. Available at: https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/ taxonomy/term/100.
FOSTER. 2017b. Open science at the core of libraries. Available at: https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/learning/open-science-at-the-core-of-libraries/#/id/5a01e2d1c2af651d1e3b1b3c.
Hrynaszkiewicz, I. 2019. Building trust to break down barriers. In Digital Science Report: The State of Open Data 2019, a selection of analyses and articles about open data, curated by Figshare. London, UK: Digital Science.
Jahnke, L., Asher, A. and Keralis, S. D. C. 2012. The problem of data. Council on Library and Information Resources. Available at: http://www.clir.org/wp-content/ uploads/ sites/6/pub154.pdf.
James, L. 2013. Defining open data. Open knowledge foundation blog. Available at: http://blog.okfn.org/2013/10/03/defining-open-data/.
Kim, Y. and Stanton, J.M. 2016. Institutional and individual factors affecting scientists’ data-sharing behaviors: a multilevel analysis. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 67 no. 4: 776-799, Available at: doi: 10.1002/asi.23424.
Kim, Y. and Adler, M. 2015. Social scientists’ data sharing behaviors: investigating the roles of individual motivations, institutional pressures, and data repositories. International Journal of Information Management, Vol. 35 no. 4: 408-418.
Kim, Y. 2017. Fostering scientists’ data sharing behavior via data repositories, journal supplements and personal communication methods. Information Processing & Management, Vol. 53, no. 4: 871-855. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2017.03.003.
King, R. D., Liakala, M., Lu, C., Oliver, S. G. and Soldalova, L. N. 2011. On the formalization and reuse of scientific research. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Vol. 8:1440-48. Available at: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2011.0029.
Krejcie, R. V. and Morgan, D. W. 1970. Determining sample size for research activities. Educational and Psychological Measurement, Vol. 30, no. 10: 607-610. Available at: Doi:10.1177/001316447003000308.
Lindemann, N. 2018. What’s the average survey response rate? [2018 benchmark]. SurveyAnyplace. Available at: https://surveyanyplace.com/average-survey-response-rate/.
Malaysia. 2015. Eleventh Malaysia Plan 2016-2020: Anchoring growth on people. Putrajaya: Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister’s Department, Malaysia. 372p.
Martinez, C.I.P. and Poveda, A.C. 2018 Knowledge and perceptions of open science among researchers—A case study for Colombia. Information, Vol. 11, no. 9, 292. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/info9110292.
National Research Council. 1985. Sharing research data. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17226/2033.
National Research Council. 2009. Beyond ‘Fortress America’: National security controls on science and technology in a globalized world. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Nicholas, D., Watkinson, A., Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Rodriguez Bravo, B., Xu, J., Abrizah, A., Swigon, M. and Herman, E. 2017. Early career researchers: scholarly behaviour and the prospect of change. Learned Publishing. Vol. 30, no 2: 157-166. Available at: DOI:10.1002/leap.1098.
Nicholas, D., Watkinson, A., Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Rodríguez Bravo, Bl., Xu, J., Abrizah, A., Swigon, M., Clark, D. and Herman, E. 2019. So, are early career researchers the harbingers of change? Learned Publishing, Vol. 32 no 3: 237-247. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1232
OECD. 2013. OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy: Sweden 2012, OECD Publishing, Paris, Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264184893-en.
Oluwatayo, J. A. 2012. Validity and reliability issues in educational research. Journal of Educational and Social Research, Vol. 2, no. 2: 391-400.
Ostaszewski, M. 2014. Analysis of the attitude within academic and research communities towards open science – quantitative survey. Paper presented at the Conference Opening Science to Meet Future Challenges, Warsaw, Poland, March 11, 2014,16p.
Parry, O. and Mauthner, N. S. 2004. Whose data are they anyway? Practical, legal and ethical issues in archiving qualitative research data. Sociology Vol. 38, no. 1:139-152. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038504039366.
Piwowar, H. A. 2011. Who shares? Who doesn’t? Factors associated with openly archiving raw research data. PLOS ONE, Vol. 6, no. 7: e18657. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018657.
Rafferty, A. E., Jimmieson, N. L., and Armenakis, A. A. 2013. Change readiness: A multilevel review. Journal of Management, Vol. 39, no. 1: 110-135. Available at: doi:10.1177/0149206312457417.
Sayogo, D.S. and Pardo, T.A. 2013. Exploring the determinants of scientific data sharing: Understanding the motivation to publish research data. Government Information Quarterly, Vol. 30, Supplement 1: S19-S31. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.011.
Savage, C.J. and Vickers, A.J. 2009. Empirical study of data sharing by authors publishing in PLoS journals. PLoS ONE, Vol. 4, no. 9: e7078. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007078.
Spies, J.R. 2013. The open science framework: Improving science by making it open and accessible. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia.
Tenopir, C., Allard, S., Douglass, K., Aydinoglu, A. U., Wu, L., Read, E., Manoff, M. and Frame, M. 2011. Data sharing by scientists: Practices and perceptions. PloS ONE, Vol. 6, no. 6: e21101. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021101 PMID: 21738610.
UK Research Council and Innovation. 2015. Guidance on best practice in the management of research data. Available at: https://www.ukri.org/funding/information-for-award-holders/data-policy/common-principles-on-data-policy/.
Verhulst, S.G. and Young, A. 2017. Open data in developing economies: Toward building an evidence based on what works and how. United States Agency for International Development. 148 p. Available at: http://odimpact.org/files/odimpact-developing-economies.pdf.
Vitae European Researchers Framework. 2016. Vitae B10: Early career researchers and employment challenges – learning from Italy and Germany, p.5) Available at https://www.vitae.ac.uk/vitae-publications/reports/vitae-occasional-papers-vol3-b10.pdf/view?searchterm=early+career+researchers.
Wei, J. 2017. Qualitative data sharing in social science. A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of School of Information Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United State.
Weiner, B. 2009. A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, Vol.4, no. 67: 9. Available at: http://www.implementationscience.com/ content/pdf/1748-5908-4-67.pdf.
Wicherts, J. M., Borsboom, D., Kats, J. and Molenaar, D. 2006. The poor availability of psychological research data for reanalysis. American Psychologist, 61:726-28. Doi:10.1037/0003-066X.61.7.726.
Wicherts, J. M., Bakker, M. and Molenaar, D. 2011. Willingness to share research data is related to the strength of the evidence and the quality of reporting of statistical results. PLoS ONE, Vol. 6, no. 11: e26828. Available at: Doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026828.
Williams, M., Bagwell, J. and Zozus, M.N. 2017. Data management plans: the missing perspective. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Vol, 71, no. 7: 130-142.
World Bank Group. 2017. Open data readiness assessment: Malaysia. The Malaysia Development Experience Series, Global Knowledge & Research Hub in Malaysia, Governance Global Practice.
Wouters, P. and Haak, W. 2017. Open data Report: The researcher perspective. Available at: https://www.elsevier.com/about/open-science/research-data/open-data-report.
Zuiderwijk, A. and Spiers, H. 2019. Sharing and re-using open data: A case study of motivations in astrophysics, International Journal of Information Management, Vol. 49: 228-241. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.05.024.