The Availability of Research Data Declines Rapidly with Article Age

Our results reinforce the notion that, in the long term, research data cannot be reliably preserved by individual researchers, and further demonstrate the urgent need for policies mandating data sharing via public archives.

• We examined the availability of data from 516 studies between 2 and 22 years old
• The odds of a data set being reported as extant fell by 17% per year
• Broken e-mails and obsolete storage devices were the main obstacles to data sharing
• Policies mandating data archiving at publication are clearly needed

Source:

Current Biology, 19 December 2013

Summary: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982213014000

More Details: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982213014000

SPIEGEL Online (in German Language): http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/wissenschaftliche-studien-verschollen-im-daten-nirvana-a-940633.html