Barriers and Challenges of Research Data Sharing

 Although data sharing includes various advantages and benefits, researchers avoid sharing their data. The present study aims at investigating the barriers to and challenges of data sharing.

 This study analyzed the literature of data sharing by searching related keywords in the field in scientific databases such as WoS, Scopus, PubMed, JSTOR, EBSCO and ProQuest without any time limitation till 1 July 2016.

 Barriers to and challenges of research data sharing are categorized into five groups: individual barriers including time, cost and devoted effort to manage and share data, losing publication opportunities, misuse and misinterpretation of data, motivational and behavioral barriers including the lack of required rewards and stimuli for data sharing and the absence of proper acknowledgment on behalf of those who reuse data, organizational barriers involving the lack of appropriate organizational support, the lack of proper financial and human resources, and the lack of and/or strict sharing policies of organizations, technical barriers including the lack of proper repositories, disuse of suitable data and metadata standards, as well as the low quality of data and language barriers, and  legal and legitimate barriers including data ownership, the right and level of use and accessibility of data, data sensitivity and considerations and the lack of knowledge about legal issues.

 In order to promote and enhance the research data sharing, identifying the barriers to and limitations in data sharing can be used as a framework for promoting and increasing data sharing.