Secondary use of shared research data  is one of the demands of the open science movement and is increasingly addressed in scientific discourse as part of good scientific practice. Arguments in favor of reusing research data highlight that open data increase efficiency of scientific knowledge generation (Allen & Mehler, 2019; Nosek et al., 2015). In particular, cost-intensive data collections, such as those typical for the field of education research and in particular for the large-scale comparative studies, can be used multiple times (Meyermann et al. 2017; van der Zee und Reich 2018). Furthermore, the availability of research data can promote transparency in the research process, because an interested audience can review the methodology used. In addition, new discoveries are facilitated and duplication of effort will be reduced when datasets are easily accessible (Pontika et al. 2015; Raffaghelli & Manca 2019). Against this background, the desire to share and (re-)use research data is becoming a key precept in research funding (cf. Mauer & Recker 2019, p. 115) and efforts for a wider inclusion and engagement of educational stakeholders.

In this symposium, we would like to take up the debate on open research data. In the first paper, we look at the activities of research data infrastructures to promote the sharing and use of research data. In the second paper, we report evidence on the challenges and opportunities of open research data from a survey of researchers in the social sciences, education, and economics. The third paper gives an example on the use of research data and how researchers can be supported in their research with available data from benchmark studies.

This symposium brings together the perspectives of researchers and three institutions from different European countries that work on questions on and solutions for data reuse to facilitate high quality research in education. The three institutions are the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS).

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