The work performed during the 3-year action led to 10 published papers and 2 manuscripts.
Several projects were conducted to assess the benefits and challenges of open data in environmental science. Tools and recommendations were developed to overcome barriers to data sharing and improve its benefits. One study examined the Government of Canada’s initiatives promoting open data, and summarized research data management (RDM) challenges, plans to modernize RDM, and best practices for data discoverability, access, and reuse. Another study outlined risks associated with publicly sharing sensitive data from animal tracking studies and proposed a framework for making these data ‘as open as possible and as closed as necessary’.. Another study outlined sources of wasted research resources in conservation science and highlighted how data rescue and reuse, open science practices, and knowledge co-creation can help improve the effectiveness and impact of conservation science. Finally, an analysis examined how open science practices can contribute to bridging the knowledge-action gap in conservation science and practice.
Other projects examined the barriers and motivations affecting decisions by researchers to engage in data sharing. In a first study, we presented the results of a survey examining data sharing practices and reported costs and benefits of sharing open data among Canadian faculty members in ecology and evolution. In a second study, we identified slow improvements to the archiving quality of open datasets shared by researchers in ecology and evolution between 2012-2019 and found that researcher training could be the single most important factor affecting data archiving quality. In a third study, we found that cooperative and non-cooperative researchers share open data of similar quality, suggesting that a lack of training in research data management impedes high-quality data sharing by cooperative scientists. In a fourth study, we defined the concept of data rescue and developed a practical framework for saving environmental data from extinction. In a fifth study, we examined how good data sharing practices and meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration can lead to greater consensus building in experimental biology, reviewing data and code sharing practices in over 1,500 empirical studies.
Two additional projects empirically assessed suggested benefits of open data. One found no evidence that mandatory open data policies increase error correction in ecology and evolution. The other found no evidence that sharing high quality open data is linked to greater transparency in how a study’s methods and results are reported.
The action’s results were communicated via invited talks, conference presentations, workshops, social media, and news articles. Insights from the action helped shape science policy in Canada and in Switzerland via my involvement in evaluation panels, working groups, policy committees, sounding boards, and learned societies.
