Journalists often emphasize that something is novel when they cover it because novelty supports something being newsworthy, and is appealing to audiences

the box of paper slips reaches the East Coast of the United States through librarians who study in Europe and then apply the practice to the cataloging of their growing collections in the course of the nineteenth century.

Policies and procedures sometimes serve as an active rather than passive barrier to data sharing. Campbell et al. (2003) reported that government agencies often have strict policies about secrecy for some publicly funded research. In a survey of 79 technology transfer officers in American universities, 93% reported that their institution had a formal policy that required researchers to file an invention disclosure before seeking to commercialize research results. About one-half of the participants reported institutional policies that prohibited the dissemination of biomaterials without a material transfer agreement, which have become so complex and demanding that they inhibit sharing [15].