Sandrine Soeharjono, Dominique Roche

Open data facilitate reproducibility and accelerate scientific discovery but are hindered by perceptions that researchers bear costs and gain few benefits from publicly sharing their data, with limited empirical evidence to the contrary. We surveyed 140 faculty members working in ecology and evolution across Canada’s top 20-ranked universities and found that more researchers report benefits (47.9%) and neutral outcomes (43.6%) than costs (21.4%) from sharing data. Benefits were independent of career stage and gender, but men and early career researchers were more likely to report costs. We outline proposed mechanisms to reduce individual costs of data sharing and increase benefits.