Data Access as Regulation

What is it about?

Scholars are pressing to share data from research online. Some justify sharing to make scholarship more honest, and easier to replicate. Others argue it is useful for teaching, or a general public. In either case, it is an effort to have scholars internally regulate research. Scholarship on regulation has something to teach about conditions for effective regulation. Compliance can deflect away from goals, and building trust is important to effective regulation. Few argue that all rules should be enforced all the time, not least because it's expensive. Data sharing online requires sharing without having built trust. Incentives to publish multiple articles with dramatically stated findings limit how effectively sharing can regulate. Directly addressing questions of trust at a distance, incentives, and public trust in scholarship could enrich understandings of what data access can accomplish, and reasons people can find sharing difficult or not worthwhile.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Digitization, debates over the interpretation of key findings in multiple fields, and retraction of scholarship that has not held up well to scrutiny have made the questions of regulating scholarship increasingly pressing. Framing the problem as one of regulation could contribute to an understanding that bridges common fault lines concerning qualitative and quantitative scholarship.