Towards a Data Sharing Culture: Recommendations for Leadership from Academic Health Centers

Sharing biomedical research and health care data is important but difficult. Recognizing this, many initiatives facilitate, fund, request, or require researchers to share their data [1–5] . These initiatives address the technical aspects of data sharing, but rarely focus on incentives for key stakeholders [6]. Academic health centers (AHCs) have a critical role in enabling, encouraging, and rewarding data sharing. The leaders of medical schools and academic-affiliated hospitals can play a unique role in supporting this transformation of the research enterprise. We propose that AHCs can and should lead the transition towards a culture of biomedical data sharing.