Yes the problem is that the research system rewards publishing papers, but most of the work is collecting the data. So if you release your data then other group

Yes the problem is that the research system rewards publishing papers, but most of the work is collecting the data. So if you release your data then other groups can write papers based on your effort for far less cost. It's sort of analogous to the problem of open source business models in the software world: if company A writes the code and releases it for free and earns money from running a cloud service, and company B just offers a cloud service, then the second company can get much higher margins because they don't have to develop it. Unfortunately it's not easy to see what the alternatives are, beyond simply not funding research through government/foundation grants. When science is paid for by companies you don't have this incentive issue because the research is judged based on (ultimately) whether it leads to successful products, not whether it leads to lots of papers getting published. You have other incentive issues of course.