Coronavirus scientists have shown a ¡°disappointing¡± reluctance to share their data with other researchers, according to Europe¡¯s champion for open science.

Kostas Glinos, head of the European Commission¡¯s open science unit, said claims that the pandemic had significantly accelerated the sharing of scientific data were not borne out by statistics, with only 9 per cent of coronavirus-related scientific papers having an attached dataset.

¡°If you look at data sharing, it is a bit disappointing ¨C not too many more are sharing their data than before the pandemic,¡± Dr Glinos told a panel at?Times Higher Education¡¯s Europe Universities Summit on 26 May.

¡°It is because the rewards system is too much based around publications in highly prestigious journals rather than rewarding scientists for their behaviour.¡±

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Dr Glinos called on research funders and universities to recognise and reward data sharing, claiming that contradictory messages from these bodies about open science¡¯s importance led to a ¡°crazy world¡± in which researchers were unsure about how they should approach this agenda.

The European Commission¡¯s new science funding framework Horizon Europe and its ¡°comprehensive proposals¡± on open science would help to promote data sharing, contended Dr Glinos, who said this commitment to replicability and open science would ¡°become clear as time goes on¡±.

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Earlier the session heard from Federica Rosetta, vice-president of academic and research relations (Europe) at Elsevier, who said that just 1 per cent of all research papers had some attached data. While the 9 per cent figure of pandemic literature was significantly higher than 1 per cent, it was still not a cause for celebration, said Dr Glinos.

One major barrier to more data sharing was the paucity of research infrastructure ¨C specifically, tools that allowed research teams to upload their data so that it was searchable and interoperable, he insisted.

¡°We need appropriate infrastructure to store this data and make sure they can be found,¡± said Dr Glinos, whose view was supported by Lidia Borrell-Dami¨¢n, secretary general of Science Europe, who argued that ¡°infrastructure must come first and then we can put incentives [in place]¡±.

¡°If you talk to many researchers at an individual level, many really like open science ¨C [they] believe in it but the means is not yet there [to do it],¡± said Dr Borrell-Dami¨¢n.

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¡°I hope this [pandemic] could be the inflexion point in promoting data sharing and open science.¡±

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com