Research data sharing in the Australian national science agency: Understanding the relative importance of organisational, disciplinary and domain-specific influences

Abstract

This study delineates the relative importance of organisational, research discipline and application domain factors in influencing researchers' data sharing practices in Australia's national scientific and industrial research agency. We surveyed 354 researchers and found that the number of data deposits made by researchers were related to the openness of the data culture and the contractual inhibitors experienced by researchers. Multi-level modelling revealed that organisational unit membership explained 10%, disciplinary membership explained 6%, and domain membership explained 4% of the variance in researchers' intentions to share research data. However, only the organisational measure of openness to data sharing explained significant unique variance in data sharing. Thus, whereas previous research has tended to focus on disciplinary influences on data sharing, this study suggests that factors operating within the organisation have the most powerful influence on researchers' data sharing practices. The research received approval from the organisation's Human Research Ethics Committee (no. 014/18).