Research data is a product of (its) time

Research data are complicated things. The question of whether they are things at all is of course contentious. Yet, even if we leave this issue aside for now, there are continuous debates - some would say struggles - over who owns the data, how to handle and describe it, how to store and share more of it and why, in short, who has which interest in it. It is also unclear when it is appropriate to speak of research data in the first place, as opposed to say, publication, document, working material, metadata, catalogue entry and so on.