Finding the balance between open access to forest data while safeguarding the integrity of National Forest Inventory‐derived information - Gessler - New Phytologist - Wiley Online Library

"First of all, one could argue that the authors do not give more than anecdotical evidence (‘Experience in the field’) that the management of plots would be changed when landowners or managers know where the monitoring plots are exactly located. We already acknowledge that the possibility that results could become biased can be sufficient to keep the exact geolocation undisclosed. However, it seems important to examine the effects of knowing the exact geo-coordinates on management more systematically and thereafter re-assess nondisclosure policies.

More importantly, however, the authors state that ‘In the event of legitimate need, existing procedures allow for data to be shared’ and ‘regulations allow for sharing the location of ground measurements for a justified reason’ and ‘more exact location data are provided for research under special circumstances’. This sounds as if there is an instance that assesses the legitimacy of data use, but it remains completely unclear, who it is to decide. At the European level, for example, and in the light of the upcoming EU Framework for Forest Monitoring, it is also not clear if decisions for data access should be made nationally or trans-nationally. If any restrictions to data access apply, the process for granting access needs to be fully transparent and harmonized among different countries to avoid any selection bias that could have strong repercussions on scientific knowledge gain and theory building.

We, however, suggest moving further and we argue that scientific data use (by research institutes and universities) should be defined as legitimate per se and an obligatory linkage between access to the exactly geolocated data and a nondisclosure agreement (see key points to be included in Supporting Information Table S1) as described by the authors should be sufficient to ensure the data and plot integrity. We might speculate that our suggestions are congruent with the intention of the authors, but if so, this should be spelled out explicitly...."