Data Sharing in Historical Perspective

"In this issue, University of Oxford researchers Susan Bull and Michael Parker serve as special editors of five studies they have conducted with partners in Kenya, South Africa, India, Thailand, and Vietnam, respectively, to investigate the views of researchers and gatekeepers of research concerning the initiation of biomedical data sharing in their country. Their responses, although positive about the general concept, were more skeptical about sharing of their own data, not unlike the responses of persons in Western countries who have not shared data. In both contexts, the uninitiated tend to regard data sharing as a great new idea and mention reasons why it would not work in their discipline. In fact, large-scale international data sharing has existed for almost 150 years and has evolved to include sharing of most kinds of scientific data. Entire disciplines are now based largely on shared data ..."