Researchers and Research Data: Improving and Incentivising Sharing and Archiving

There has been a lot of discussion within the scientific community around the issues of reproducibility in research, with questions being raised about the integrity of research due to failure to reproduce or confirm the findings of some of the studies. Researchers need to adhere to the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles to contribute to collaborative and open science, but these open data principles can also support reproducibility and issues around ensuring data integrity. This article uses observations and metrics from data sharing and research integrity related activities, undertaken by a Research Integrity and Data Specialist at the Francis Crick Institute, to discuss potential reasons behind a slow uptake of FAIR data practices. We then suggest solutions undertaken at the Francis Crick institute which can be followed by institutes and universities to improve the integrity of research from a data perspective. One major solution discussed is the implementation of a data archive system at the Francis Crick Institute to ensure the integrity of data long term, comply with our funders’ data management requirements, and to safeguard our researchers against any potential research integrity allegations in the future.