Barriers to sharing data
Barriers to sharing data per discipline
The following chart looks at data from articles published in 2024.
Engineers and material scientists
In engineering, the most common barrier that researchers describe is that the data is confidential or sensitive, often due to commercial reasons. Engineers frequently work on projects with industrial partners, where data is proprietary and sharing it could compromise competitive advantage or violate contractual agreements.
Materials science also exhibits low levels of FAIR data sharing. Only 5% of publications describe FAIR data sharing despite 72% indicating that data is shared by some other less-accessible route. Researchers in materials science indicate that they often lack access to suitable repositories or are unaware of their existence. This lack of infrastructure means that even if researchers are willing to share their data, they may not know where or how to do so effectively.
Environmental scientists
Environmental scientists most commonly stated that they are held back from sharing their data openly because the data they are working with is owned by third parties. For instance, data collected by governmental bodies or private organisations may be subject to legal restrictions, meaning in many cases that researchers do not have the rights to make the data public directly and must refer data access requests on to those third parties.
Physicists
The physics community is concerned that the formats they produce might not be accessible even if shared. This could mean that the format is proprietary or not commonly available, or in some cases referred to data collated in a way that would be difficult to understand in and of itself. The technical and cultural factors involved in these barriers pose a significant obstacle to sharing at scale.
Barriers to sharing data per country
Geographical variations in common barriers to data sharing are also visible in the data statements we analysed. We have focused on four major research-producing countries to illustrate these differences.
The following chart looks at data from articles published in 2024.
In China and India, researchers were most likely to state that they are unfamiliar with repositories that they could use to share their data, indicating a lack of awareness and/or a lack of infrastructure hampering data-sharing efforts. In the UK, the primary concerns revolve around data confidentiality and the accessibility of the data format to others. Researchers worry about the potential misuse of sensitive information and whether others can effectively use their data. For researchers in the USA, the most common obstacle is the concern that the data format would not be accessible even if shared, highlighting a need for better standards and tools and a culture of data management to enable wider data access and interoperability.