Researchers are increasingly engaging with the imperative to ‘make data FAIR’, with the last letter signifying ‘Reusable’. This is clearly paying off: our Data Stations currently hold more than 300,000 datasets, and our staff of around 60 people work in various roles to encourage, guide, and support researchers in sharing data.
But who is actually downloading and using the data that have been published online, and why? For what purposes? How do shared data open up new avenues for research? We still do not know enough about this.
Exploring reuse of data
A data reuse-focused event held in Leiden in November 2024 highlighted how it is not easy to trace audiences for shared research data. In addition, simple metrics such as the number of downloads tell us relatively little about how data are being used. One recommendation that arose from this event is that ‘data reuse metrics should be put into context, possibly by combining quantitative with qualitative information’.
With this in mind, we want to ask you: have you ever used a dataset that you have found online in the DANS Data Stations or a DataverseNL repository? If so, we would like you to tell us more about your research project, how you found the data, how you used the data, and what challenges (if any) you encountered.
Share your experience for case studies
Our plan is to collect information that we can develop into inspiring news articles, plus a series of case studies that we can publish in Zenodo. We believe that your input may inspire researchers to share FAIR data, as well as encourage others to consider looking more thoroughly for reusable data for their projects.
Your input will also help DANS to better understand our repository users and perhaps improve the quality of our documentation and metadata. That is a useful contribution to the advancement of open science.
So, please share your experiences with us.
Your input will be processed by DANS. We intend to use the gathered information to publish about data reuse practices. (Note: form is in English. You are welcome to respond in English or Dutch.)
Showcase at DANS Open Day 2026
We plan to highlight examples of data reuse at the upcoming DANS Open Day on 11 June 2026. A selection of respondents will be invited to participate. If this is of interest to you, you can indicate this and provide us with your contact details at the end of the form.
