Opportunities for Data Exchange (ODE) is a FP7 project of members of the Alliance for Permanent Access (APA), which is gathering evidence to support the right investment in a layer for data sharing, re-use and preservation, in the emerging e-Infrastructure. The main concern of the ODE project is to talk with key players in the field. In dialogue with relevant stakeholders, views and opinions on challenges and opportunities for data exchange are collected and documented. To gain a broad and common understanding the ODE project collected 21 stories, in which significant stakeholders describe their experiences and their view on the topic. The focus is on the following four perspectives: scientific communities, infrastructure initiatives (e. g. data centres and data repositories), management (e. g. funding agencies and policy makers) and other relevant stakeholders (e. g. citizen science projects). This report provides an introduction, documents the stories and combines the key barriers and drivers for the permanent access to research data.