Open data mandates losing support among researchers

Fewer researchers support national mandates for open research data than they did 10 years ago, a global survey has found.

While awareness of the FAIR data principles – that researchers should make their data “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable” – has massively increased over the past decade, enthusiasm for making these practices compulsory has significantly fallen in recent years, explains the latest State of Open Data Report which has been polling researchers on this issue since 2015.

Drawing on responses from 4,700 researchers across 151 countries, the study by Digital Science, Springer Nature and Figshare found 80 per cent are aware of FAIR principles, up from 40 per cent in 2015, but support for national mandates on open research data had dropped below 50 per cent in most leading economies.

Only 39 per cent of UK researchers polled support a national mandate in 2025, down from 65 per cent in 2025, says the report published on 26 January.

Only about one in three US researchers (30 per cent) support a mandate in 2025, down from 53 per cent a decade earlier, while Germany saw a similar drop in support, down from 60 per cent in 2015 to 40 per cent in 2025.

Support among Canadian researchers fell from 52 per cent to 39 per cent over the same period, while support was down from 62 per cent to 45 per cent in Spain in this time frame.

The sharpest drop is in Australia where only 27 per cent of researchers support national mandates on open research data, down from 63 per cent. Only in India did a majority of researchers (55 per cent) support national policies on this issue.

“Taken together, the pattern suggests that early high-confidence endorsement of mandates may be giving way to more qualified views as implementation and compliance realities become clearer,” explains the report, adding this “reinforces the need to pair policy with practical infrastructure and support that makes sharing feasible and genuinely reusable”.

That said, enthusiasm for open data remains high overall with 81 per cent of all respondents saying they strongly support openness in principle. Support for open access also remained high at 88 per cent of respondents.

As in previous years, most researchers (69 per cent) say they receive too little credit for sharing their data, although this is down from 78 per cent when the question was first asked in 2020.

“Modest improvement over five years suggests that while awareness of the issue has grown, systemic changes to reward structures in academia have been slow to materialise,” says the report.

On the issue of artificial intelligence, 32 per cent say they use it regularly for research, up 10 percentage points on last year.

With 25 per cent of researchers using AI for metadata creation, “AI tools shifted from peripheral curiosity to integral parts of research workflows”, says the report, which remarks “as adoption grows, ensuring transparency, reproducibility, and responsible use is critical – trends that may also support more FAIR-aligned practices, especially in metadata standardisation and repository integration”.

Support for preprints is significantly lower at 59 per cent, adds the report on the “notable hesitation” about this practice which might reflect “recent concerns about large-scale AI-generated content”.

Mark Hahnel, vice-president (open research) at Digital Science and founder of Figshare, said the latest figures showed “open research is no longer an aspiration – it’s embedded practice”.

Urging for continued progress, he added: “Researchers need systems that reward openness and workflows that make sharing effortless.”

“Reforming research assessment and aligning incentives will be key to sustaining progress.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com