The Wiley Society Member Survey has tracked the rising importance of open access (OA) in the research community and what members are looking for from societies when it comes to OA for several years. Regardless of subject or region, support for open data proves to be continuously strong. So, whatever discipline you’re in and wherever you are in the world, open data is a timely issue that all societies need to think about. The results of our 2020 survey make it clear that open data is also here to stay, and scholarly publishing may need to do some catching up.

The increasing importance of open data

Over half of our 2020 survey respondents said that open data is more important than it was 12 months ago. 73% believe it’s important that societies offer open data that is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) to better understand each other’s work. Society support for open or transparent peer review is also extremely important to 71% of respondents. As research collaboration grows and the need for sharing data grows along with it, societies will need to do more to make research data more accessible. So, what steps can societies take to help create a more open research community?

What kind of support for openness do members want?

No-cost or open access to society content is the top desire for most researchers. Likewise, we found that making journal articles more accessible to non-academic audiences, greater transparency around peer review, and improving how we measure the impact of research are also highly important. According to their members, only a quarter of societies (26%) currently make it mandatory that data should be shared, while 61% of societies actively encourage the sharing of data.

Members are looking for more help with the technicalities of data sharing as well. Only 43% are aware that their society provides guidelines for how to share data and 34% say the needed technical support is also available. Improving how the impact of research is measured was especially important to those who have published their work open access, so we can expect assessing impact to become even more important as more researchers publish through OA models.

How can societies support data sharing?

Currently, 48% of members don’t know if their society even supports open data. And that’s a missed opportunity on multiple levels: members of societies with a data sharing policy are more likely to recommend society membership to their peers and more likely to be attractive to early careerists. So, if there isn’t one already, first come up with a policy around open data and communicate about it often and widely. Not having a policy of any kind of will disappoint current members and discourage younger members from joining. And if you do have an open data policy, the stronger the better. If data sharing, is mandatory, be sure that you supply the guidelines and technical expertise to enable members to share data as easily as possible. The society, your members, and the wider subject community will all benefit!