The question we need to ask before driving everyone down the road to data curation nirvana is why do it at all and, in corollary, what are the consequences from not doing it? Those who will be most engaged in the doing of it, whether researchers, librarians, informaticians or other faculty support, already have to contend with a barrage of competing calls on their time and their budgets, so why should they welcome the additional burden implied by demands that they curate and share their data? This chapter starts by examining the key policy and business drivers for doing just that, identifying the synergies that management strategies may have with the cause of data curation and data sharing, and considering the extent to which they coincide with the increasingly prescriptive policies of the major research funders, principally in the UK. Setting these two perspectives in the context of the traditional research culture, I conclude by drawing some inferences concerning those actions essential to achieving any motivational impetus for adopting new practices in the curation and sharing of data across the global research community.
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