From September 2019 to March 2020, the National Coordination Point for Research Data Management (LCRDM)’s task group for ‘Policy and guidelines for collaboration on research data’ conducted a small study of the issues and barriers that researchers encounter with regard to data collaboration in projects where the partners are from multiple institutions. Examples include national and international inter-university projects, as well as projects involving partners from the private sector. Based on several use cases, the task group conducted an inventory of the various levels of complexity amongst collaborative partnerships, as well as of the most urgent issues when collaborating on research data. We have used the results of this inventory to make several recommendations that could support researchers with regard to data sharing dilemmas in complex research projects.