China’s scientific progress hinges on access to data : Nature News & Comment

" ... It is hard — and getting harder — for Chinese scientists to access high-quality domestic data. Most of the public data are held by government departments, some of which are strengthening their monopoly and making it harder for researchers to access the information. This affects researchers in the humanities and social sciences especially, but also extends to fields such as environmental science and public health, because the data involved can be politically sensitive. At conferences, I hear numerous complaints from colleagues about how hard it is to extract routine figures such as air-pollutant levels from the authorities, for example. Even when data are published, some are likely to be of poor quality because they have not been collected properly. The most notable example is the controversy on China’s gross domestic product (GDP). There is a significant — and widening — difference between the official national estimate and the total calculated by adding up the GDPs of each of China’s 31 province-level divisions. The National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing admits that different data-collection methods are used at the provincial level, and is trying to harmonize them. So far, progress has not been encouraging. Public data sharing has been turned into a profit-making scheme. It would be useful, for example, to compile data on pollution from road vehicles in China. Done properly, this would require access to detailed records on the number of each type of vehicle licensed, road congestion, detailed engine parameters and fuel standards. Research institutions struggle to get even basic figures on vehicle ownership from public agencies, so they must use less rigorous — and often misleading — sales data that industry groups collect from manufacturers. Ironically, the same wealthy automobile manufacturers that inflate their own numbers can get objective, reliable data about their competitors’ sales by buying them from special channels that are linked with some government departments — at a price that public institutions and scientists cannot afford. In such an environment, it is no surprise that some research teams in China do not want to publish their own data. Ownership of data represents intangible capital that gives scientists a competitive advantage in some academic fields ..."