Not all research has a positive outcome. Some research produces equivocal findings; some research results in negative findings. Research with positive findings tends to hog all the attention, which is good in one way but can be bad in others.

The University of Cambridge Library has developed some well-organised pages called Support for Managing Research Data.

The information is organised into four sections:

According to Graham Pryor, editor of Managing Research Data,

How can we encourage researchers to share data?

The Medical Research Council in the UK annually invests around £700 million of public money in research, the primary output of which is data.

The National Science Board has recently issued a report, Digital Research Data Sharing and Management, from their Task Force on Data Policies. The Board is calling for comments.

Governments worldwide are starting to crack open their data vaults and let users rummage inside.

It was not that long ago that the World Bank opened up its data banks to users. Since that momentous day, the Bank has been swamped by users, all keen to use the data - so much so that traffic to the data site now dwarfs traffic to the Bank's home page, according to Aleem Walji, practice manager of World Bank Institute's innovation team.

Cloud solutions to research data sharing seem to be popping up all over the Web.