Is There a Business Case for Open Data? - The Scholarly Kitchen

"On the first day of Open Access Week, Figshare released the 2017 edition of their ‘State of Open Data’ report. The document contains a number of thoughtful pieces from the European Commission, the Wellcome Trust, and Springer Nature (among others), as well as the results of Figshare’s second annual survey of researchers about their experiences with data sharing. The report as a whole is a useful microcosm on where we currently stand with open data. Large, influential organizations like the European Commission and Wellcome have thrown their weight (and policies) behind the idea that the data underlying scientific research should be available to everyone. By contrast, the response from researchers has been mostly polite indifference: Only 20-30% of respondents claimed to have shared their data ‘frequently’, and just under half claimed either ‘rarely’ or ‘never’."