Skip to main content
Log in

The life-changing magic of sharing your data

  • Comment
  • Published:

From Nature Human Behaviour

View current issue Submit your manuscript

The benefits of data sharing to the scientific community are widely agreed upon. But does data sharing also benefit individual scientists? I argue that data sharing may carry tangible benefits to one’s own research that can outweigh any potential associated costs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1: Increasing propensity to share data among psychology researchers at eight UK universities.
Fig. 2: Motivations and concerns when sharing data among psychology researchers at eight UK universities.

References

  1. Gewin, V. Nature 529, 117–119 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Van Horn, J. D. & Gazzaniga, M. S. Neuroimage 82, 677–682 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Nat. Neurosci. 3, 845–846 (2000).

  4. Milham, M. P. et al. Nat. Commun. 9, 2818 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Gorgolewski, K. J., Wheeler, K., Halchenko, Y. O., Poline, J.-B. & Poldrack, R. A. F1000Res 4, 299 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Houtkoop, B. L. et al. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 1, 70–85 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Open Science Collaboration. Science 349, aac4716 (2015).

  8. Bishop, D. V. R. Soc. Open Sci. 3, 160109 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Rumbold, J. M. & Pierscionek, B. J. Med. Internet Res. 19, e47 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Barron, D. How freely should scientists share their data? Scientific American Blogs https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-freely-should-scientists-share-their-data (2018).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Laurence T. Hunt.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Summary of survey data; Survey on Data Sharing screenshots; and Answers to free text survey questions.

Supplementary Data

ZIP file containing raw anonymised survey data and analysis scripts, and further details of survey.

SI Guide

SI guide explaining file identity for ZIP file.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hunt, L.T. The life-changing magic of sharing your data. Nat Hum Behav 3, 312–315 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0560-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0560-3

  • Springer Nature Limited

This article is cited by

Navigation