Do Open Data Badges Influence Author Behaviour? a Case Study at Springer Nature

Abstract

Digital badges have previously been shown to incentivise journal authors to share their data openly. In this paper we introduce an Open data badging project at the Springer Nature journal BMC Microbiology. The development of the Open data badge is described, as well as the challenges of developing standard badging criteria and ensuring authors’ awareness of the badges. Next steps for the badging project are outlined, which are based on the experiences of the team assessing the badges, the number of badges awarded at the journal to date, and the results of an author survey.