Navigating Challenges & Barriers to Sharing Data in Biological Anthropology

This presentation is part of a symposium, Data Sharing and Open Data in Biological Anthropology, that was presented at the 51st annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Biological Anthropology in London, Ontario. The full program of the conference is accessible online. The presentation abstract is as follows: As academia continues to deepen its dependence on digital methods and data, scholars are seeing increasing calls for transparency in their research practices, including depositing and sharing data. Recognition of the benefits for collaboration and access fuel desire for open data by researchers, while concerns about reproducibility and replicability incentivize journals and funders to require data sharing. In Canada, researchers now face requirements for grants from the Tri-Agencies and increasing requirements from journals and international funders. Though these policies are well-intended and necessary in the modern research environment, ease of compliance and expertise across disciplines varies. This talk will discuss how to navigate issues such as finding places to deposit and share data, ambiguity in data ownership and copyright, data sovereignty questions, concerns about ethics and human remains, and the challenges of working with a large variety of complex data. Because of the field's position at the intersection of social sciences, health sciences, humanities, and natural sciences, biological anthropologists often face higher barriers to sharing and accessing data than researchers in other fields. While these barriers are not unique to anthropology individually, together they create situations that are difficult to navigate. In response to the growing demands on researchers in these areas, research institutions now provide Research Data Management supports and experts who can assist researchers in finding solutions to their specific challenges.