Are we interested in building the perfect data repository for our researchers …or in building one that might get used? It's a good question, and scientist Cameron Neylon has tried to answer it.

Though Neylon applauds the work of formal data sharing mechanisms such as BuzzData and Dryad, he finds these services "involve significant additional work alongside an active decision to "publish the data". The research repository of choice remains a haphazard file store and the data sharing mechanism of choice remains email."

For Neylon, the key issue is that most efforts in this space offer to solve problems that most researchers don't think they have.

"Most researchers don't want to share at all, preferring to retain as much of an advantage through secrecy as possible. Those who do see a value in sharing are for the most part highly skeptical that the vast majority of research data can be used outside the lab in which it was generated. The small remainder who see a value in wider research data sharing are painfully aware of how much work it is to make that data useful."

So what is to be done? Neylon suggests solving problems researchers DO think they have - the need to store and back up their data properly (to satisfy funding body requirements) and to make it easily accessible to the immediate research team - whoever, and wherever, they may be (so the work can proceed smoothly).

And making it all dead simple ... He goes on to suggest the characteristics of an ideal service.

Peter Murray-Rust, who helped draft the Panton Principles for open data, has drawn up some criteria for what would make a successful data repository.