Abstract
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 165-176 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Paleobiology |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | Dec 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Paleontological Society.
Funding
Improved data sharing requires buy-in from individuals, who may themselves benefit from the practice and enhance the quality of science in paleontology. As reviewed by Marwick and Birch (), there are many reasons to share data (e.g., reciprocal data sharing by others; reproducibility of research; enabling others to ask new questions) and some associated costs (e.g., time required to clean data; data use without citation). One of the incentives is that data sharing is associated with increased citation of the publication where the data were initially published (Sears ; Piwowar and Vision ; Tomaszewski ; Colavizza et al. ; Dorta-González et al. ). For example, Colavizza et al. () reported that when publications included data availability statements with the associated data publicly accessible, those publications saw a 25% increase in their citations compared with publications without available data. As demonstrated here (), the potential citation benefit may be even larger in a discipline like paleontology, where publications on data compilations have become mainstream. Changes to the format on funding proposals, for example, inclusion of a “research outcomes” section that includes datasets by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (i.e., German Research Foundation) and a non-publication section in National Science Foundation grant reports, can further encourage data sharing. Of perhaps greater importance, data sharing ensures the reproducibility of scientific results (Piwowar and Vision ; Altman et al. ; Marwick and Birch ). As has been demonstrated to the detriment of many fields of study (e.g., behavioral ecology [Viglione ], food science [van der Zee et al. ], paleontology [Price ], psychology [John et al. ]), some researchers have been guilty of misrepresenting their data. Data sharing provides a means to uphold academic integrity and establishes an ethical and practical standard that encourages scientific advancement (Marwick and Birch ; Raja and Dunne ). We thank the many authors of the official PBDB papers who shared their raw data with us, and those responsible for maintaining the PBDB as the excellent community resource that it is. We also thank M. Patzkowsky, G. Jones, M. Hopkins (editor), and P. Monarrez and P. Novack-Gottshall (reviewers) for their comments that improved an earlier version of this article. This work was supported in part by the Paleosynthesis Project, with funding from the Volkswagen Stiftung, and by the TERSANE project, with funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (FOR 2332; grant nos. KI 806/17–1 (N.B.R., D.D.), BA 5148/1-2 to K. De Baets (P.S.N.), AB 109/11-1 to M. Aberhan (C.J.R.), and Ko 5382/2-1 (Á.T.K.). P.L.G. was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP 2022/05697-9). B.M.G. was supported by the National Science Foundation (ANT-1947094 to C. Sidor). B.S. was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (JA 2718/3-1) and the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| National Science Foundation | JA 2718/3-1, ANT-1947094 |
| National Science Foundation | |
| Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | FOR 2332, Ko 5382/2-1, KI 806/17–1, BA 5148/1-2, AB 109/11-1 |
| Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | |
| Volkswagen Foundation | |
| Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo | 2022/05697-9 |
| Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo | |
| Netherlands Earth System Science Centre |
Keywords
- Biodiversity
- Open science
- Paleobiology Database
- Specimen-based
- Taxonomy