Under Trump, Scientists May Get a Break on Data-Sharing

"Almost four years after the Obama administration ordered federal agencies to make plans for requiring the public sharing of articles and data from government-sponsored research, the agencies’ policies are almost complete and ready to be put in place.

“A lot of questions have to be answered.” But the Association of American Universities, which represents the nation’s premiere research institutions, is concerned that those policies aren’t sufficiently synchronized. And if they aren’t better aligned before they go into effect, the AAU contends, researchers will face an array of differing expectations and formats for recording, storing, and reporting their data.

In that sense, the election of Mr. Trump, with his generally skeptical approach to regulations, is "probably a positive," said Tobin L. Smith, vice president for policy at the AAU, since a potential Clinton administration probably would have moved much faster in imposing the agency-by-agency data-sharing plans developed in the Obama administration.

It’s "not that we don’t want to move in the direction to ensure open data access," Mr. Smith said. "But a lot of questions have to be answered."

Others involved in university research community who are more directly tied to the open-access movement said they don’t disagree with the bottom line of the AAU’s analysis but would prefer to keep pushing ahead with putting those policies in place...."