Funding data-sharing
Peer reviewers of study proposals frequently find it difficult to differentiate between the costs of the study team’s research and the costs associated with maintaining the cohort and data. Without transparency, the costs of the research can look very expensive. Better differentiation between the cost drivers should enable funding applicants to better justify their proposed costs.
Generally, the cost of building in good practice prospectively is significantly less than when trying retrospectively to address the curational and sharing needs. New studies can be expected to have planned effective, efficient and economical means for managing data, including the processes supporting sharing.
Not all legacy datasets necessarily merit retrospective investment to make them available for new use. The quality and relevance of the data, the likely demand and the costs of bringing them up to a shareable standard, are all factors that should be taken into account.
Requirements
R17. Funding proposals to MRC should differentiate in broad terms between the proposed costs of (i) collecting and cleaning new data and the associated cohort costs; (ii) the study team’s proposed research programme; (iii) ongoing data curation and preservation; and (iv) data-sharing.
R18. Unless otherwise approved by MRC, studies should not seek to generate revenue through sharing, but may recover the costs to prepare data for sharing.
Resources
- The Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS) website contains advice on cost / benefit analysis, particularly in relation to research data preservation to enable ongoing access in the UK higher education sector.