Error Needs Culture! Advancing Data Sharing by Acknowledging Errors

In this manuscript, we examine the role of errors in data-driven research and assess the extent to which a lack of a positive error culture has been addressed across various research fields. It presents examples of how scientific communities have addressed related problems and highlights observations on how newly developed error cultures can positively impact the research process. We do this against the backdrop of Germany’s effort to facilitate data sharing through a National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) which was initiated in 2018. We demonstrate, error cultures both benefit from suitable infrastructure while at the same time needing their support to spread. Therefore, we argue that it is not the failure or the errors themselves that hinder the progress of scientific knowledge, but rather the way in which they are subsequently dealt with. Moreover, data sharing and open science practices can only be fostered by developing an error culture in each disciplinary context.