Promoting Data Sharing: The Moral Obligations of Public Funding Agencies

Sharing research data has great potential to benefit science and society. However, data sharing is still not common practice. Since public research funding agencies have a particular impact on research and researchers, the question arises: Are public funding agencies morally obligated to promote dat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science and engineering ethics 2024-08, Vol.30 (4), p.35, Article 35
Main Authors: Wendelborn, Christian, Anger, Michael, Schickhardt, Christoph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic freedom
Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
Cooperative Behavior
Education
Engineering
Ethics
Ethics, Research
Funding
Humans
Information Dissemination - ethics
Information sharing
Licenses
Medical research
Medicine/Public Health
Moral Obligations
Original Research/Scholarship
Personal information
Philosophy
Philosophy of Science
Research ethics
Research funding
Research Support as Topic - ethics
Researchers
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:Sharing research data has great potential to benefit science and society. However, data sharing is still not common practice. Since public research funding agencies have a particular impact on research and researchers, the question arises: Are public funding agencies morally obligated to promote data sharing? We argue from a research ethics perspective that public funding agencies have several pro tanto obligations requiring them to promote data sharing. However, there are also pro tanto obligations that speak against promoting data sharing in general as well as with regard to particular instruments of such promotion. We examine and weigh these obligations and conclude that all things considered funders ought to promote the sharing of data. Even the instrument of mandatory data sharing policies can be justified under certain conditions.
ISSN:1471-5546
1353-3452
1471-5546
DOI:10.1007/s11948-024-00491-3