Sharing research data is now actively encouraged by:

• research funding bodies such as the Australian Research Council
• the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research
• academic journal publishers, many of which publish the datasets on which articles are based
• many national governments, e.g. the US, UK, Australia, NZ
• government-funded national initiatives, such as the Australian Research Collaboration Service.

Some funding agreements from the Australian Research Council require researchers to make data publicly available within a specified time frame, generally through deposit in an institutional or discipline-specific public repository. The ARC requires an explanation for non-compliance.

Data sharing can be rewarding for researchers. Benefits include:

• Greater exposure of research work, useful for gaining grants or placing publications in journals
• Greater opportunities for breakthrough research
• Greater opportunities to expand the scope and scale of research
• Greater opportunities for research collaboration, both internationally and across disciplines.

Services that support data sharing

The Australian Research Collaboration Service provides tools to facilitate data sharing. ARCS services such as the Data Fabric enable research teams to easily store, share and maintain data.

The CloudStor service from AARNet provides a sharing service for large files. You may also be able to arrange file sharing via ITS or High Performance Computing at UQ.

Data sharing has the potential to increase citations of your work. The authors of one study* established that publicly available data was associated with a 69% increase in citations, independent of journal impact factor, date of publication, and author country of origin.

* Piwowar HA, Day RS, Fridsma DB, 2007 'Sharing Detailed Research Data is Associated with Increased Citation Rate'. PLoS ONE 2(3): e308. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000308