A new task for NSF reviewers: Recognizing the value of data reuse

"As of January 2011, the NSF requires that all grant applications include a data management plan. NSF grant reviewers have a new responsibility: evaluating whether a given data management plan adds to the merit of a proposal. This responsibility ought to be taken seriously. Policies without attention often become merely an exercise in paper-pushing. Large NIH grants also require a data sharing plan, but the NIH explicitly disallows consideration of this plan as part of the merit criteria. As a result, many investigators dismiss the NIH guidance as “toothless” [1], and evidence suggest it has little effect on rates of data sharing [2]. When we don’t value data sharing, we essentially disregard potential scientific contributions. Data sharing has clearly benefited scientific progress in several arenas — genetics, thanks to open archiving of DNA sequences, for example — but many consider the circumstances of these run-away successes to be unique...."