DATA SHARING PRACTICES AND ATTITUDES OF SCIENTISTS IN THE GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL (GCC) COUNTRIES

Advances in science and technology over the last century have brought dramatic changes to most societies of the world, with a parallel increase in the amounts of research data being produced. Scientific progress in the Middle East geographic region of the world has, in general, lagged far behind Western countries during this same time period. Several Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Persian Gulf countries of the Middle East have recently made huge investments in developing their educational and research capacities, with the goal of establishing a culture and practice of scientific innovation. Several recent studies looking at data sharing and re-use among scientists in North America and Europe have insisted that sharing data is central to the goals of scientific progress. Using the Diffusion of Innovation Theory as a framework, this research looked at the data sharing practices and perspectives of scientists in the Middle East, through the lens of the four main elements of this theory: the innovation, communication channels, time, and the social system. The analysis of this phenomenon may provide a clearer understanding of data sharing as part of the emerging practice of conducting scientific research and its importance to the region. A mixed-methods research approach, using semi-structured interviews and an online survey, was conducted with scientific researchers in GCC nations. A separate analysis was conducted for the country of Qatar

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity