Incentives for Data Sharing: An interview study with cohort holders and platform developers

Various concerns have been documented in the literature over the sharing of data, including the lack of incentives for sharing. To address this, several systems for recognition have been proposed (e.g. Data Authorship, CRediT, data citation…). This study was set up to discuss the past experiences with data sharing with persons involved with data sharing platforms to better understand the potential barriers and solutions. In total, 17 cohort holders and developers associated with three different data sharing platforms were recruited for a semi-structured interview. The goal of this study was to (1) document the views and opinions on different incentives for data sharing; (2) to explore experiences on data sharing and credit mechanisms within consortia; (3) to record views on the roles of different actors within academia to change the existing incentive structure for Open/FAIR Data; and (4) to investigate the interaction between data sharing practices and novel technologies.