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Contact your Faculty Librarians on in-depth research questions |
Sharing data can speed up the pace of discovery. It enables researchers in the same or different research fields to conduct new analysis and generate new research by reusing the data from new perspectives.
In addition to the altruistic reason above, sharing your research data brings the following benefits:
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Create potential collaboration opportunities Data sharing may lead to collaboration between data users and data creators. Researchers reusing the data for one project may need similar data for another project, leading to an opportunity to collaborate. |
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Comply with requirements Funders and journal publishers are increasingly expecting researchers to make the supplementary data of their publications openly available. See below for some examples of common requirements for PolyU researchers. |
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Enhance reputation & impact Data is citable as a standalone scholarly output. Researchers who reuse the shared data will most likely cite the research papers generated from the shared data too. |
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Preserve for your future use Your data will be more organized when you prepare it for sharing from the onset as you maintain proper documentation of your data. Proper documentation of your data can help you identify, retrieve, and understand your data again even if you become out of touch with it in the future. |
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Ensure reproducibility of your research Data sharing enables validation of scientific results. This helps to ensure the reproducibility of your research and thus promotes scientific integrity. |
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Benefit teaching Reproducing published results from an existing dataset can be an excellent way for students to learn how to organize and analyze similar data in their future research. |
Open Data/ DMP requirement from Funders
An increasing number of funders now require grant applicants to include a Data Management Plan (DMP) in their funding applications. Additionally, researchers are expected to share their research data on data repositories for open access, as part of promoting responsible data management and sharing practices.
► Research Grants Council (RGC)
In the Open Access Plan of the RGC released in June 2021, two initiatives have been outlined under Phase II of the plan, which will be enforced and monitored from February 2024 to July 2026. These initiatives are as follows:
Initiative 8: DMP as a Requirement for Applications
The requirement of DMP in the applications submitted to the RGC’s research funding schemes…is an important step to promote responsible data management and sharing…the RGC would consider providing a DMP template… PIs would be required to report on the implementation of the DMP.
Initiative 9: Data Sharing Pilot Scheme
...the RGC could at the end of Phase II further consider the implementation of a data sharing pilot scheme for publication-generating data from funding scheme(s)…most relevant to the development of Hong Kong and therefore having the highest public value.
Read more from the Open Access Plan of the Research Grants Council (released June 2021), pp.10-11.
► Other funders (Overseas)