Geoffrey Boulton et al make a compelling case for data sharing in a letter to The Lancet. Science as a public enterprise: the case for open data begins:

With the increasing availability of research data for sharing, the need for reliable ways of finding and citing datasets has increased. Enter DataCite, an international organisation which aims to:

Under the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, Australian researchers are now expected to make their research data available for sharing. One way to do that is to deposit the data in a long term repository. This international list of data repositories provides some of the available services for researchers to use.

Following the recent deadly E. coli outbreaks in Europe, researchers have released the first complete map of the genome and plasmids. The data set is being released under a public domain licence and has a DOI to make it easier to cite.