The EUR100billion Horizon Europe funding programme from the European Commission, for example, will challenge funded researchers to deliver "open access to publications, data, and to research data management plans" starting in 2021 \citep{union2018}. Sharing data, funders argue, creates more value and impact from every grant they award, and enhances trustworthiness and potential reproducibility.
While these arguments are compelling and the rhetoric often exciting ("researchers are creating, gathering and using data in hitherto unimagined-volumes" \cite{force}), reservations have been expressed \cite{Bezuidenhout_2018} \cite{question}. Whatever your position, it is true to say that the open data challenge is a big challenge, and it is fair to recognise that communities of researchers are ready to meet it in different ways and to different degrees \cite{sharing}. For example, life scientists have been reported to be the most ready to share the data they create \cite{Jones_2019} \cite{Grant_2018}, and early career researchers may be particularly well-prepared to do so \cite{Sholler_2019} \cite{Campbell_2019}. Even in health science disciplines, where research data is associated with complex ethical issues like consent and privacy, the obligation to share clinical trial data is recognised \cite{Taichman_2017}. Researchers in most data-oriented disciplines have embraced the challenge to an extent, perhaps looking forward to the greater impact they can create \cite{data} \cite{mark}. It helps that understanding of what 'open' data really means has become quite sophisticated, aided by the FAIR Data Principles \cite{Wilkinson_2016} and promoted with the much-used soundbite that research data should be "as open as possible, as closed as necessary" \cite{2020}.
Looking at this through a publishing-focused lens, when researchers are ready to share data publishers and journals can play an important role in enabling and realising the benefits. They help communicate and explain standards and expectations \citep{Wu_2019}. They help researchers meet the data sharing requirements set by their funders \cite{easier}. They increase the discoverability of shared data, perhaps 1000-fold \cite{Vines_2013}. They prompt researchers to "plan for the longevity, reusability, and stability of the data" \cite{samors2018a}.