Experiences of data sharing in the CARMEN project

Thanks also to Alistair Knowles for his presentation about data sharing in the CARMEN project.

He talked about the difficulties of citation of data in cases of protracted ‘ownership’ and also cases of unknown ‘ownership’ (the inverted commas are mine).

His experience is that scientists are much more comfortable with informal agreements and are able to sort matters of ownership and citation amongst themselves. But when asked to formalise arrangements they got nervous and more reluctant to act.

He argued that the solution is not a legal one but a social one (agreement within the community), a conclusion also reached by myself and some others in the Legal and Policy Issues session of the Research Data theme at the JISC Innovation Forum in July of this year. For more details see my earlier post. Do you agree?