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German Psychological Society publishes recommendations for data management
The German Psychological Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie, DGPs) published recommendations on sustainable data management in psychological research. These recommendations aim to enable an optimal secondary use of data and are committed to the ideal of openness and transparency in science – an ideal that fosters cooperation and facilitates verification of research findings. “The data management recommendations are part of a number of initiatives launched by the German Psychological Society to assure and enhance the quality of psychological research”, says Andrea Abele-Brehm, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. As former president of the DGPs (2014-2016), she initiated and closely attended to the development of these recommendations.
For a long time, science organizations have claimed that data collected in publicly funded research projects should also be made publicly available. Accordingly, the German Research Foundation (DFG) published new guidelines for data management in September 2015 and asked the scientific societies to specify these guidelines for their respective disciplines. The German Psychological Society responded to this request and agreed upon concrete recommendations for data management in September 2016.
General principle: Open and transparent science
The recommendations are driven by the idea of an open and transparent science, where data that have been collected in the context of published scientific works and publicly funded research projects should be made available to other researchers for review and secondary use.
“The guidelines provide concrete recommendations for data storage and they define the rights and duties of those who provide the data and of those who re-use the data”, explains Mario Gollwitzer, Professor of Psychological Methods and Social Psychology at Philipps-Universität Marburg and executive board member of the DGPs.
A careful balance of rights and duties
The recommendations aim at balancing different interests and values. “The ideal of an open and transparent science also needs to consider the privacy rights of participants of empirical studies” explains Felix Schönbrodt from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, who was one of the authors of the recommendations. “Furthermore, the aim of optimal secondary use of data has to be offset against the legitimate interests of those who collected the data. This includes the right to first use of data. The present recommendations provide concrete information how to sustain this balance.”
Implementation of these recommendations in research practice
The DGPs encourages all funding agencies to consider these recommendations for data management in their grant decisions and in their evaluation of final reports. The DGPs further encourages all scientific journals to pay attention to the implementation of the recommendations, especially concerning the provision of data analyzed in published research. The DGPs also will cooperate with international psychological science organizations with the aim of establishing and harmonizing comparable data management recommendations internationally.
The DGPs also encourages its members to consider these recommendations when hiring colleagues for positions in academia and when evaluating applicants‘ scientific merits.
The DGPs will continuously monitor the practicality of these recommendations and will evaluate them after a five year period.
The recommendations for data management can be retrieved here:
Schönbrodt, F. D., Gollwitzer, M. & Abele-Brehm, A. (2016). Data management in psychological science.
http://www.dgps.de/fileadmin/documents/Empfehlungen/Data_Management_in_Psycholog...
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