Data-sharing: Everything on display | Nature

"Open data-sharers are still in the minority in many fields. Although many researchers broadly agree that public access to raw data would accelerate science — because other scientists might be able to make advances not foreseen by the data's producers — most are reluctant to post the results of their own labours online (see Nature 461, 160–163; 2009). When Wolkovich, for instance, went hunting for the data from the 50 studies in her meta-analysis, only 8 data sets were available online, and many of the researchers whom she e-mailed refused to share their work. Forced to extract data from tables or figures in publications, Wolkovich's team could conduct only limited analyses...."