Data sharing
Data sharing across disciplines
We found varying levels of commitment to open data sharing practices across different scientific domains.
Data for articles published in 2024.
High-Level Transparency: Environmental Science
81%
Environmental science stands out with a relatively high level of data sharing. In this field, 81% of papers are published with underpinning data available publicly through some route, and 59% meet the FAIR criteria.
Moderate Willingness, Low FAIR Compliance: Physics
72%
In the physics community we see a significant willingness to share data, as evidenced by the fact that 72% of articles are published with the data shared. However, only 18% of these articles meet the FAIR criteria.
Considerable Barriers: Engineering and Materials Science
55%
In the field of engineering authors experience higher barriers to fully transparent data sharing. While 55% have made their data available, only 8% of papers include data that meets FAIR standards.
Data sharing by geography
The data-sharing practices among researchers can vary between different countries as well as different subject communities. We looked in more detail at four major research-producing countries. In China, 65% of researchers report sharing their data via some route, while in India, this figure is slightly lower at 59%. The UK leads the group we examined with 71% of researchers sharing data alongside their published manuscripts, followed by the USA at 67%. However, when it comes to adhering to the FAIR data principles, the numbers drop sharply and show larger gaps between countries. Only 6% of researchers in China and 4% in India share FAIR-compliant data, compared to 26% in both the UK and the USA. This disparity highlights a critical difference between general data sharing and the adoption of more rigorous standards for making data persistently open and reusable across global research communities. See graph below.
Data for articles published in 2024.