Project description:Open data sharing is critical for scientific progress. Yet, many authors refrain from sharing scientific data, even when they have promised to do so. Through a preregistered, randomized audit experiment (N = 1,634), we tested possible ethnic, gender and status-related bias in scientists' data-sharing willingness. 814 (54%) authors of papers where data were indicated to be 'available upon request' responded to our data requests, and 226 (14%) either shared or indicated willingness to share all or some data. While our preregistered hypotheses regarding bias in data-sharing willingness were not confirmed, we observed systematically lower response rates for data requests made by putatively Chinese treatments compared to putatively Anglo-Saxon treatments. Further analysis indicated a theoretically plausible heterogeneity in the causal effect of ethnicity on data-sharing. In interaction analyses, we found indications of lower responsiveness and data-sharing willingness towards male but not female data requestors with Chinese names. These disparities, which likely arise from stereotypic beliefs about male Chinese requestors' trustworthiness and deservingness, impede scientific progress by preventing the free circulation of knowledge.
Project description:Why do members of the public share some scientific findings and not others? What can scientists do to increase the chances that their findings will be shared widely among nonscientists? To address these questions, we integrate past research on the psychological drivers of interpersonal communication with a study examining the sharing of hundreds of recent scientific discoveries. Our findings offer insights into (i) how attributes of a discovery and the way it is described impact sharing, (ii) who generates discoveries that are likely to be shared, and (iii) which types of people are most likely to share scientific discoveries. The results described here, combined with a review of recent research on interpersonal communication, suggest how scientists can frame their work to increase its dissemination. They also provide insights about which audiences may be the best targets for the diffusion of scientific content.
Project description:Discrete, ephemeral natural phenomena with low spatial or temporal predictability are incredibly challenging to study systematically. In ecology, species interactions, which constitute the functional backbone of ecological communities, can be notoriously difficult to characterise especially when taxa are inconspicuous and the interactions of interest (e.g., trophic events) occur infrequently, rapidly, or variably in space and time. Overcoming such issues has historically required significant time and resource investment to collect sufficient data, precluding the answering of many ecological and evolutionary questions. Here, we show the utility of social media for rapidly collecting observations of ephemeral ecological phenomena with low spatial and temporal predictability by using a Facebook group dedicated to collecting predation events involving reptiles and amphibians in sub-Saharan Africa. We collected over 1900 independent feeding observations using Facebook from 2015 to 2019 involving 83 families of predators and 129 families of prey. Feeding events by snakes were particularly well-represented with close to 1,100 feeding observations recorded. Relative to an extensive literature review spanning 226 sources and 138 years, we found that social media has provided snake dietary records faster than ever before in history with prey being identified to a finer taxonomic resolution and showing only modest concordance with the literature due to the number of novel interactions that were detected. Finally, we demonstrate that social media can outperform other citizen science image-based approaches (iNaturalist and Google Images) highlighting the versatility of social media and its ability to function as a citizen science platform.
Project description:Digital security as a service is a crucial aspect as it deals with user privacy provision and secure content delivery to legitimate users. Most social media platforms utilize end-to-end encryption as a significant security feature. However, multimedia data transmission in group communication is not encrypted. One of the most important objectives for a service provider is to send the desired multimedia data/service to only legitimate subscriber. Broadcast encryption is the most appropriate cryptographic primitive solution for this problem. Therefore, this study devised a construction called anonymous revocable identity-based broadcast encryption that preserves the privacy of messages broadcasted and the identity of legitimate users, where even revoked users cannot extract information about the user's identity and sent data. The update key is broadcast periodically to non-revoked users, who can obtain the message using the update and decryption keys. A third-party can also revoke the users. It is proven that the proposed construction is semantically secure against IND-ID-CPA attacks and efficient in terms of computational cost and communication bandwidth.
Project description:It is widely acknowledged that data sharing has great potential for scientific progress. However, so far making data available has little impact on a researcher's reputation. Thus, data sharing can be conceptualized as a social dilemma. In the presented study we investigated the influence of the researcher's personality within the social dilemma of data sharing. The theoretical background was the appropriateness framework. We conducted a survey among 1564 researchers about data sharing, which also included standardized questions on selected personality factors, namely the so-called Big Five, Machiavellianism and social desirability. Using regression analysis, we investigated how these personality domains relate to four groups of dependent variables: attitudes towards data sharing, the importance of factors that might foster or hinder data sharing, the willingness to share data, and actual data sharing. Our analyses showed the predictive value of personality for all four groups of dependent variables. However, there was not a global consistent pattern of influence, but rather different compositions of effects. Our results indicate that the implications of data sharing are dependent on age, gender, and personality. In order to foster data sharing, it seems advantageous to provide more personal incentives and to address the researchers' individual responsibility.
Project description:Ancient DNA is producing a rich record of past genetic diversity in humans and other species. However, unless the primary data is appropriately archived, its long-term value will not be fully realised. I surveyed publicly archived data from 42 recent ancient genomics studies. Half of the studies archived incomplete datasets, preventing accurate replication and representing a loss of data of potential future use. No studies met all criteria that could be considered best practice. Based on these results, I make six recommendations for data producers: (1) archive all sequencing reads, not just those that aligned to a reference genome, (2) archive read alignments too, but as secondary analysis files, (3) provide correct experiment metadata on samples, libraries and sequencing runs, (4) provide informative sample metadata, (5) archive data from low-coverage and negative experiments, and (6) document archiving choices in papers, and peer review these. Given the reliance on destructive sampling of finite material, ancient genomics studies have a particularly strong responsibility to ensure the longevity and reusability of generated data.
Project description:BACKGROUND:Respecting patient privacy and confidentiality is critical for doctor-patient relationships and public trust in medical professionals. The frequency of potentially identifiable disclosures online during periods of active engagement is unknown. OBJECTIVE:The objective of this study was to quantify potentially identifiable content shared on social media by physicians and other health care providers using the hashtag #ShareAStoryInOneTweet. METHODS:We accessed and searched Twitter's API using Symplur software for tweets that included the hashtag #ShareAStoryInOneTweet. We identified 1206 tweets by doctors, nurses, and other health professionals out of 43,374 tweets shared in May 2018. Tweet content was evaluated in January 2019 to determine the incidence of instances where names or potentially identifiable information about patients were shared; content analysis of tweets in which information about others had been disclosed was performed. The study also evaluated whether participants raised concerns about privacy breaches and estimated the frequency of deleted tweets. The study used dual, blinded coding for a 10% sample to estimate intercoder reliability using Cohen ? statistic for identifying the potential identifiability of tweet content. RESULTS:Health care professionals (n=656) disclosing information about others included 486 doctors (74.1%) and 98 nurses (14.9%). Health care professionals sharing stories about patient care disclosed the time frame in 95 tweets (95/754, 12.6%) and included patient names in 15 tweets (15/754, 2.0%). It is estimated that friends or families could likely identify the clinical scenario described in 242 of the 754 tweets (32.1%). Among 348 tweets about potentially living patients, it was estimated that 162 (46.6%) were likely identifiable by patients. Intercoder reliability in rating the potential identifiability demonstrated 86.8% agreement, with a Cohen ? of 0.8 suggesting substantial agreement. We also identified 78 out of 754 tweets (6.5%) that had been deleted on the website but were still viewable in the analytics software data set. CONCLUSIONS:During periods of active sharing online, nurses, physicians, and other health professionals may sometimes share more information than patients or families might expect. More study is needed to determine whether similar events arise frequently and to understand how to best ensure that patients' rights are adequately respected.
Project description:An increasing number of publishers and funding agencies require public data archiving (PDA) in open-access databases. PDA has obvious group benefits for the scientific community, but many researchers are reluctant to share their data publicly because of real or perceived individual costs. Improving participation in PDA will require lowering costs and/or increasing benefits for primary data collectors. Small, simple changes can enhance existing measures to ensure that more scientific data are properly archived and made publicly available: (1) facilitate more flexible embargoes on archived data, (2) encourage communication between data generators and re-users, (3) disclose data re-use ethics, and (4) encourage increased recognition of publicly archived data.
Project description:The global Protein Data Bank (PDB) was the first open-access digital archive in biology. The history and evolution of the PDB are described, together with the ways in which molecular structural biology data and information are collected, curated, validated, archived, and disseminated by the members of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank organization (wwPDB; http://wwpdb.org). Particular emphasis is placed on the role of community in establishing the standards and policies by which the PDB archive is managed day-to-day.
Project description:In January 2020, a workshop was held at EMBL-EBI (Hinxton, UK) to discuss data requirements for the deposition and validation of cryoEM structures, with a focus on single-particle analysis. The meeting was attended by 47 experts in data processing, model building and refinement, validation, and archiving of such structures. This report describes the workshop's motivation and history, the topics discussed, and the resulting consensus recommendations. Some challenges for future methods-development efforts in this area are also highlighted, as is the implementation to date of some of the recommendations.