Towards a Data Sharing Culture: Recommendations for Leadership from Academic Health Centers. This (US) Public Library of Science article comes up with seven recommendations to facilitate data sharing in the health and medical sciences. Note: the large number of (seemingly) relevant citations

Canada currently has no nationally adopted standards or policies governing how research data is collected, catalogued, or preserved. A new collaborative effort has been set up to address the challenges surrounding the access and preservation of this data. The Research Data Strategy (RDS) Working Group is a multi-disciplinary group of universities, institutes, libraries, granting agencies, and individual researchers with a shared recognition of the pressing need to deal with Canadian data management issues.

Quoted: The RIN report "To share or not to share: Publication and quality assurance of research data outputs" (June 2008) presents the findings from a study of whether or not researchers do make their research data available to others, and the issues they encounter when doing so.

The DOE Data Explorer (DDE) locates scientific research data - such as computer simulations, numeric data files, figures and plots, interactive maps, multimedia, and scientific images - generated by DOE-sponsored research in various science disciplines. The DOE Data Explorer includes a database of citations prepared by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). It is intended for students, the public, and to researchers who are looking for experimental or observational data outside their normal field of expertise.

As promised, SHERPA's Juliette service (compliments Romeo) now lists and rates the open access policies of research funders (UK and beyond) not only for peer reviewed outputs but for research data. Policies are given a pass-fail rating based on the following criteria: 1) Data archiving is required. 2) Data must be deposited within five years.

PANGAEA - Publishing Network for Geoscientific & Environmental Data is an Open Access library aimed at archiving, publishing and distributing georeferenced data from earth system research. Most of the data are freely available and can be used by referencing the related publication or the dataset citation. The data description (metadata) of all data sets are visible and include the principle investigators (PI) name and email for contact.

DReSNet proposes to increase the interaction and cooperation between researchers and practitioners in e-Science and Digital Repositories. Activities, aims and objectives are clearly articulated.

The Social Science Data Archive, DANS, Netherlands, has published quality guidelines for data archiving and "making data future-proof." An innovation is that the 17 guidelines apply in turn to data archives, but also data producers and data users.

This study investigated costs to Higher Education Institutions of the preservation of research data and developed guidance to HEFCE and institutions on these issues. It also provided a methodological foundation on research data costs for the forthcoming HEFCE-sponsored feasability study for a UK research Data Service.