Five Essential Factors for Data Sharing, published by Springer Nature today, translates findings about researcher attitudes and behaviours into concrete measures that will accelerate data sharing. The white paper builds on a number of reports published in 2018 that pinpoint challenges researchers face when sharing data. The barriers identified include, for example, how to organize data in a presentable and useful way, confusion about copyright, and not knowing where data can be shared. Five Essential Factors for Data Sharing outlines approaches needed to tackle these and further barriers. The white paper and its underlying data are freely available via the figshare repository.