Open Data Practices in Animal Welfare Research

Making animal welfare research data openly available enables replication, meta-analysis and more efficient use of welfare science to drive real-world improvement.

Key Facts

Less than 20% of animal welfare research papers include links to openly accessible underlying data
Data sharing in welfare research is hindered by concerns about data sensitivity, competitive advantage and lack of incentives
Open data repositories including Dryad, Zenodo and figshare provide platforms for welfare research data archiving
Meta-analyses of welfare intervention data are far more powerful when based on individual-level open data
Funding bodies including UKRI now mandate data management plans and open data sharing for funded research

Welfare Considerations

The culture of data hoarding in academic research has real welfare costs. When individual researchers retain proprietary access to welfare data, the opportunity to conduct high-powered meta-analyses that could definitively resolve welfare debates is lost. Open data practices enable the standing on shoulders of giants that accelerates welfare science progress. The welfare case for requiring open data from publicly funded welfare research is compelling and should drive policy at funding body and journal levels.

What You Can Do

Support journals that require data availability statements and open data sharing as conditions of publication
Advocate for funding bodies to mandate open data deposition for animal welfare research
Engage with researchers about depositing their welfare data in publicly accessible repositories
Support development of standardised data formats for animal welfare research that enable meta-analysis
Donate to organisations that develop welfare data infrastructure and open access publishing