It seems that scientists cannot be trusted to preserve their research data, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia claims that scientists are "poor stewards of their data" after they found that around 80 percent of scientific data is lost within two decades of publications, The Telegraph reported.

"I don't think anybody expects to easily obtain data from a 50-year-old paper, but to find that almost all the datasets are gone at 20 years was a bit of a surprise," Timothy Vines, visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia, Canada and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

For their study, they chose a random set of 516 studies published between 1991 and 2011. They found that all data from the 2-year-old papers was still available but that the chance of it still existing fell off by 17 percent for each year of age.

In the study, which was published recently in the journal Current Biology, researchers warn that loss of data can waste research money and delay scientific research.

Vines told the Telegraph that papers with readily accessible data are more valuable for society and thus should get priority for publication.

"Losing data is a waste of research funds and it limits how we can do science. Concerted action is needed to ensure it is saved for future research," he said.

Researchers also advised that scientists begin uploading information onto public archives so that it can be preserved for the future as opposed to using old datasets with limited access.

"People in America and Europe have used floppy discs for many years but they do not have access to these any more. In countries where resources are more limited, they may hold onto these technologies for longer and that could mean that they are more likely to be able to access to their data," Timothy Vines, visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia, Canada and lead author of the study, Vines told SciDev.Net.

Researchers said having access to the raw data of a study is vital for other scientists to asses, replicate or build on that work.

In the study, Data was requested from the authors of each of the randomly-chosen studies, but the researchers found that the odds for even finding a working email address declined by seven per cent each year since publication.

They found that nearly 80 percent of scientific data is lost within two decades of their publication.