Data sharing on Covid research ‘disappointing’, says EU chief

Coronavirus scientists have shown a “disappointing” reluctance to share their data with other researchers, according to Europe’s champion for open science.

Kostas Glinos, head of the European Commission’s open science unit, said claims that the pandemic had significantly accelerated the sharing of scientific data were not borne out by statistics, with only 9 per cent of coronavirus-related scientific papers having an attached dataset.

“If you look at data sharing, it is a bit disappointing – not too many more are sharing their data than before the pandemic,” Dr Glinos told a panel at Times Higher Education’s Europe Universities Summit on 26 May.

“It is because the rewards system is too much based around publications in highly prestigious journals rather than rewarding scientists for their behaviour.”

Dr Glinos called on research funders and universities to recognise and reward data sharing, claiming that contradictory messages from these bodies about open science’s importance led to a “crazy world” in which researchers were unsure about how they should approach this agenda.

The European Commission’s new science funding framework Horizon Europe and its “comprehensive proposals” on open science would help to promote data sharing, contended Dr Glinos, who said this commitment to replicability and open science would “become clear as time goes on”.

Earlier the session heard from Federica Rosetta, vice-president of academic and research relations (Europe) at Elsevier, who said that just 1 per cent of all research papers had some attached data. While the 9 per cent figure of pandemic literature was significantly higher than 1 per cent, it was still not a cause for celebration, said Dr Glinos.

One major barrier to more data sharing was the paucity of research infrastructure – specifically, tools that allowed research teams to upload their data so that it was searchable and interoperable, he insisted.

“We need appropriate infrastructure to store this data and make sure they can be found,” said Dr Glinos, whose view was supported by Lidia Borrell-Damián, secretary general of Science Europe, who argued that “infrastructure must come first and then we can put incentives [in place]”.

“If you talk to many researchers at an individual level, many really like open science – [they] believe in it but the means is not yet there [to do it],” said Dr Borrell-Damián.

“I hope this [pandemic] could be the inflexion point in promoting data sharing and open science.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com