Experts say research data management should be an integral part of university curricula

"Demands to make publicly funded research data available to other researchers often go unheard. Although the providers of research funds such as the German Research Foundation or scholarly associations such as the Verein für Socialpolitik plead the case for more data exchange between researchers, few scientists so far have been willing to provide their data to others for effective re-use. These are the results of the panel on research data management held on 6 September 2013 at the annual meeting of the Verein für Socialpolitik ... The round of experts pleaded for a stronger 'culture of sharing'. This could be created by raising the awareness for the importance of documenting and sharing data among the younger generation of researchers. In order to provide incentives for documentation and 'Open Data', the citation of data is of critical importance. The panelists agreed that research data management should be an integral part of university curricula.  Initial success has been made at the level of infrastructure, in particular regarding the establishment of institutional research data centres at large research institutes or universities. But most smaller or third-party-funded projects in economics and social sciences still lack opportunities to deposit data in a data repository or to find support in their data management. Here the current funding programmes of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and other funding organisations could help to address the problem with innovative and discipline-specific solutions.  The panel discussion was organised by the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and the German Data Forum (RatSWD) who collaborate on the DFG-funded Project EdaWaX (European Data Watch Extended). The event was held during the annual meeting of the Verein für Socialpolitik hosted by the University of Düsseldorf."