Data Sharing Is Caring: Crisis-Induced Realisation of Open Access Policy in a PhD Project on Food Practices

Cross-cultural and comparative research is becoming increasingly relevant in the field of food studies. However, the COVID-19 pandemic made travel and research visits impossible. The European Union (Berlin Declaration. Berlin declaration on open access to knowledge in the sciences and humanities. Retrieved from https://openaccess.mpg.de/67605/berlin_declaration_engl.pdf , 2003) has long postulated the necessity of research data sharing and preventing data waste. Using the cultural-historical wholeness approach to reflect on the example of the methods employed by a comparative PhD project on kindergarten lunch practices in Norway and China, this chapter shows how the crisis of the impossibility of directly conducting research (due to the outbreak of the pandemic) activated the data-sharing policy. This chapter argues that with careful consideration of epistemological, ethical, and methodological issues, data sharing in qualitative research can be beneficial for researchers, the scholarly community and the public and can help promote a research culture of sustainability in the long run.