Research Data Management and Data Sharing for Reproducible Research - Results of a Community Survey of the German National Research Data Infrastructure Initiative Neuroscience.

Science is changing: the volume and complexity of data is increasing, the number of studies is growing and the goal of achieving reproducible results requires new solutions for scientific data management. In the field of neuroscience, the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI-Neuro) initiative aims to develop sustainable solutions for research data management (RDM). To obtain an understanding of the present RDM situation in the neuroscience community, NFDI-Neuro conducted a comprehensive survey amongst the neuroscience community. Here, we report and analyse the results of the survey. We focused the survey and our analysis on current needs, challenges, and opinions about RDM.The German neuroscience community perceives barriers with respect to RDM and data sharing mainly linked to (1) lack of data and metadata standards, (2) lack of community adopted provenance tracking methods, 3) lack of secure and privacy preserving research infrastructure for sensitive data (4) lack of RDM literacy and (5) lack of resources (time, personnel, money) for proper RDM. However, an overwhelming majority of community members (91%) indicated that they would be willing to share their data with other researchers and are interested to increase their RDM skills. Taking advantage of this willingness and overcoming the existing barriers requires the systematic development of standards, tools, and infrastructure, the provision of training, education, and support, as well as additional resources for RDM to the research community and a constant dialogue with relevant stakeholders including policy makers to leverage of a culture change through adapted incentivisation and regulation. Significance Statement A comprehensive survey amongst the neuroscience community in Germany determined the current needs, challenges, and opinions with respect to standardized research data management (RDM). The Neuroscience community perceives a lack of standards for data and metadata, a lack of provenance tracking and versioning of data, a lack of protected digital research infrastructure for sensitive data and a lack of education and resources for proper RDM. However, an overwhelming majority of community members indicated that they would be willing to share their data with other researchers and are interested to increase their RDM skills. Thus, the survey results suggest that training, the provision of standards, tools, infrastructure, and resources for RDM holds the potential to significantly facilitate reproducible research in neuroscience.