Towards Effective and Rewarding Data Sharing

Recently issued NIH policy statement and implementation guidelines (National Institutes of Health, 2003) promote the sharing of research data. While urging that "all data should be considered for data sharing" and "data should be made as widely and freely available as possible" the current policy requires only high-direct-cost (>US$500,000/yr) grantees to share research data, starting 1 October 2003. Data sharing is central to science, and we agree that data should be made available.