Sustainability Through Open Data Sharing and Reuse in The Digital Economy

Despite target 12.5 of the United Nations sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calling for a substantial reduction of waste through prevention, recycling, and reuse; the scientific discourse to date remains void of studies showcasing the sustainability value of open data sharing and re-use among researchers. The paper bridges this literature gap by studying the potential of digital data archives to mediate the sustainable value creation of open data sharing and re-use within the digital economy. Therefore, using a three-stage stratified clustered random sampling of the Journal of Applied Econometrics Digital Data repository, I obtained and analyzed European equity market data. After reformatting and augmenting the raw time series with spatial meta-data, their spatio-temporal econometric modelling within the R statistical software produced reasonable evidence in support of the sustainability potential of data recycling among scholars. By minimizing duplicate data collection, the analysis also supported the efficient use of scarce research funding resources, and hence is of great value to all research stakeholders.