Dear Angry Professor,
Some time ago I requested the raw data for the studies that you published in [Social Science Journal]. I didn't get a response from you and I am now asking for the second time. If you have decided not to cooperate at least you could acknowledge my email.
Yours sincerely,
[Some Stranger]Well! First, I can appreciate this person's frustration, as I have myself attempted to obtain data from authors of other studies. It came as a surprise to me, naive thing that I was, that relatively few authors will actually comply with the agreement they signed in order to get their study published. I have only had success obtaining data from authors that I know personally. This is a problem that my professional organization, who publishes these journals, should probably deal with at some point.
However, imagine, if you will, someone asking for your data for a study you published, say, two years ago. Most of the software that folks in my discipline use to collect data generate output files in proprietary formats. Rendering "the raw data" in a useful format requires (based on my afternoon's activities) at least a few hours of digging through old files, rechecking and repairing machine and experimenter errors, and then generating text files somehow.
Having seen both sides of the "can I have your data" scenario, the very last thing I would do to get the cooperation of the person who must put in all this effort to send me the data is to fire off a rude email insinuating that the author was an unprofessional hack trying to hide something. I would first try to determine if my original request* had been received. But then again, this is probably a perfect example of how electronic messages can lead to misunderstandings and bad feelings.
*The original message, which was conveniently attached to this missive, also contained the remark: "Our goal is to verify, by reanalyzing your data, the substantive claims made in your paper." Gee, thanks. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
6 comments:
Ewwwww....
Send back something that looks like an autoresponder.
"Your request has been received and is being processed. We process these requests on a first-come/first-served basis. The average wait-time is currently 45 business days.
Have a nice day"
Or something equally frosty.
Aah...
Science at work...
This requester is clearly one of those academics with no social skills. Possibly nothing derogatory was meant by either missive. That doesn't excuse the rudeness, though. I think you might send the person a version of your last two paragraphs. The "form letter" response would be great too.
Vito - what a great idea! I didn't even consider it.
Dang, and I wasted all that time!
Bravo to you for being responsive to your colleague.
As you've pointed out, a big part of the reason this is time consuming is the need to return to something after it's been put aside for months or years.
What I try to do is make a web page accompanying a submitted paper, put data or code up for download there, and then cite that web page in the paper.
This takes extra work at submission time, but I think it will tend to raise my odds of paper acceptance, and the usefulness of my paper to others (since some people won't even try requesting data sets or code by email -- I think students are particularly likely to be shy in this regard).
And because the web page nicely packages and documents that material, it can be quite helpful if I or others in my group return to that data or code in the future. So sometimes doing this might actually save me time in the end, even if outside researchers don't want the material.
I like the last anonymous comment: a suggestion of how to reasonably live up to your commitments rather than trying weasel out of them as suggested by liz and Vito.
I'm curious though which journal requires you to make your raw data available. It's not standard practice in my discipline, though I think it's a good idea and would like to be able to cite it as a precedent. I'm also very interested in how well it works in practice (other than your experience).
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