POST: The Research Data Sharing Business Landscape

Rebecca Springer and Roger C. Schonfeld (both Ithaka S+R) have co-authored a post on The Scholarly Kitchen, “The Research Data Sharing Business Landscape.” Springer and Schonfeld focus on the business of “large-scale generalist data repositories,” focusing on the four they deem “the most significant players in the landscape today”: Dryad, Mendeley Data, figshare, and Zenodo.

The authors point to a few key trends within these four repositories: an increase in integration with open source options; integrating data publication and sharing within existing user workflows; and facilitating compliance with funding agency requirements for data sharing. These trends point towards these four services taking advantage of their existing strengths and attempting to justify their existence in a business-case scenario. As Springer and Schonfeld point out, “there is little reason to believe that data sharing has developed into a sustainable, let alone profitable, line of business. With growing funder and publisher mandates, however, it is clear that several companies and not-for-profits are staking their claim on the belief that research data must be part of a comprehensive workflow solution.”

As users and as consultants for faculty, student, and staff projects that may require data sharing, dh+lib readers may be interested in keeping abreast of the changes and trends in these data repositories.