I was thrilled when I learned that the QUEST center at the BIH was going to reward open data reuse with awards. The details can be found on their website, but the bottom line is this: open science does not only implicate opening up your data, but actually the use of open data. So if everybody open up their data, but nobody is actually using it, the added values is quite limited.
For that reason I started some projects back in 2015/2016 designed to see how easy it actually is to find data that could be used to answer a question that you are actually interested in. The answer is, not always as easy. The required variables might not be there, and even i they are, it is quite complex to start using a database that is not build by yourself. To understand the value of your results, you have to understand how the data was collected. One study proofed to be so well documented that it was a contender: the English Longitudinal Study on Aging. One of the subsequent analyses that we did was published in a paper –mentioned before on this blog-.and that paper is the reason why I am writing this blog. We received the Open data reuse award.
The award has a 1000 euro attached to it, money the group can spend on travel and consumables. Now, do not get me wrong, 1000 euro is nothing to sneeze at. But 1000 euro is not going to be major driver in your decision whether to reuse open data or not. But the award is nice and I hope effective in stimulating open science, especially as can stimulate the conversation and critical evaluation on the value of reusing open data .
bob siegerink 