Geographic Data for Academic Research: Assessing Geographic Data for Academic Research: Assessing Access Policies Access Policies Bastiaan van Loenen and Harlan J. Onsrud 1 ABSTRACT: Data availability is a key issue affecting the collective well-being of society. Economic and legal scholars have argued that the current, relatively open, access-to-data environment in the United States is beneficial to advancing knowledge and the economy. However, little empirical evidence exists to validate the extent to which various access policy environments do or do not contribute to the productivity of academic researchers. Our research aimed to evidence support or lack of support of various data policies in the context of access to, and use of, geographic data within the university research environment. We synthesized a set of twenty-three recommended access-to-data principles from recommendations set forth in the literature. An online questionnaire strove to gain sufficient information to determine whether recommended principles were adhered to in the acquisition of each specific data set and whether scientists were productive in their use of such data sets. Productivity was assessed in terms of five measures. We hypothesized that data-sharing relationships would be more productive for science if the data policies confronted by scientists in their use of digital geographic data conformed with the recommended policies advocated in the literature. The data indicated relatively clear statistical significance in testing the principles of “adherence to pricing at marginal cost or less” and “provision for availability of metadata.” Correlated with the productivity of scientists, the collected survey data evidenced non-support of the first principle and support of the second. The latter finding suggests that government, private sector, and academic suppliers of geographic data should give high priority to the documentation of metadata in order to stimulate the more widespread use of available spatial data. This article describes the survey and statistical methods employed in researching this problem and presents the results of testing the two recommended principles. The implications of the findings are discussed. KEYWORDS: Geographic data, GIS, data access principles, productivity, measures of success, metadata, open access, cost recovery, t-test, chi square test Introduction Data availability is a key issue affecting the collective well-being of society. Data and information are the raw materials for the production of useful knowledge. The possibilities for discovering new insights about the natural world, which have both commercial and public interest value, are extraordinary (NRC 1999a, p. 34). The academic community has taken advantage of inexpensive and efficient opportunities to share data and knowledge across digital networks with relatively few legal, policy, or technological encumbrances. The characteristics of digital data (data sets) and collections of data (databases) that make them easy to share and help advance science. Yet, these same characteristics provide disincentives for the provisioning of data from across broad segments of society; "If [information] can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without even its leaving our possession, how can we protect it?" (Barlow 1994, p. 85). This begs the counter question: If access to data is overly constrained by legal or technological methods, how can we realistically use the data in advancing the well-being of society? Some foresee that the “open-access-to-data” environment in academe will expand ultimately because “information wants to be free” (Stewart Brand’s slogan cited in Barlow 1994, p. 89). Others contend that the real future of the information age lies “in metering every drop of knowledge and charging for every sip” (Okerson 1996, p. 80). Most suggest models that balance between the two extremes (see e.g., Varian 1995, p. 201; Reichman and Samuelson 1997; Maurer et al. 2001). Pressure by the private sector to shift the legal balance by increasing the protection for databases through legislation (see Reichman and Uhlir 1999; HR 354 1999; HR1858 1999; NRC 2000; Maurer et al. 2001) and self-help measures (contracts, licensing, and technological methods for limiting access) is threatening the ability of the scientific community to access data. Pressure by some local governments towards revenue generation from sales of data (NRC 1997, p. 6; Reichman and Samuelson 1997, p. 68), private funding of academic research (Nelkin 1984, p. 97; NRC 1997, pp. 111, 132), and pressure by university administrators to generate royalties from 1 Bastiaan van Loenen and Harlan J. Onsrud, Geographic Data for Academic Research: Assessing Access Policies, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2004, pp. 3-17