FYI@Librarian: Digital Science Report @ The State of Open Data Report 2017

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Digital Science Report @ The State of Open Data Report 2017

Figshare's annual report, The State of Open Data 2017, looks at global attitudes towards open data. It includes survey results of 2,300 respondents and a collection of articles from industry experts, as well as a foreword from Jean-Claude Burgelman, Head of Unit Open Data Policies and Science Cloud at the European Commission.

Its key finding is that open data has become more embedded in the research community - 82% of survey respondents are aware of open data sets and more researchers are curating their data for sharing.

Some key findings:

Respondents have become more aware of open data sets (82 percent, up from 73 percent) than in 2016
Age does not appear to be a major factor in this trend
74 percent of researchers are curating their data for sharing
The willingness of researchers to reuse open data sets in their own research has grown in the past year by 10 percent to 80 percent, with the increase replicated across age groups
The number of researchers who routinely share their data has also grown modestly since 2016, from 57 percent to 60 percent
The proportion of researchers who have never made a data set openly available has reduced in the last year