Data sharing practices across knowledge domains: A dynamic examination of data availability statements in PLOS ONE publications

Abstract

As the importance of research data gradually grows in sciences, data sharing has come to be encouraged and even mandated by journals and funders in recent years. Following this trend, the data availability statement has been increasingly embraced by academic communities as a means of sharing research data as part of research articles. This article presents a quantitative study of which mechanisms and repositories are used to share research data in PLOS ONE articles. We offer a dynamic examination of this topic from the disciplinary and temporal perspectives based on all statements in English-language research articles published between 2014 and 2020 in the journal. We find a slow yet steady growth in the use of data repositories to share data over time, as opposed to sharing data in the article and/or supplementary materials; this indicates improved compliance with the journal’s data sharing policies. We also find that multidisciplinary data repositories have been increasingly used over time, whereas some disciplinary repositories show a decreasing trend. Our findings can help academic publishers and funders to improve their data sharing policies and serve as an important baseline dataset for future studies on data sharing activities.

Initial insight into three modes of data sharing: Prevalence of primary reuse, data integration and dataset release in research articles

“…Specifically, most supporting information for dataset release (63.2%, 55/87) would cause trouble, as pointed out in other studies (Imker et al, 2021; Jiao & Li, 2022). Supporting information is only available on the electronic journal site and require an access contract.…”

“…Imker et al (2021) actually found that any place in an article can be recognized as the largest source of reused data in studies. Specifically, most supporting information for dataset release (63.2%, 55/87) would cause trouble, as pointed out in other studies (Imker et al, 2021;Jiao & Li, 2022). Supporting information is only available on the electronic journal site and require an access contract.…”

Shedding light on functional near-infrared spectroscopy and open science practices

“…Specifically, there are 488 fMRI (the ratio of codes shared to Google Scholar publications = 0.00110) and 81 EEG (the ratio of codes shared to Google Scholar publications = 0.00008) datasets available on Open Neuro, 45 alone (see Ref. 46 for an examination of the frequency of data sharing across fields). For the currently available data on openfNIRS, the majority are saved in the .snirf format (n=10 snirf, n=1 csv, n=1 not listed), and the more recently posted data follow the BIDS organization (n=3).…”

A study of search strategy availability statements and sharing practices for systematic reviews: Ask and you might receive

“…The use of data availability statements instructing readers to directly contact authors for data may be relatively infrequent compared to the other mechanisms of making data available, 4 but it is a practice that continues. 4,5 Unfortunately, in cases where authors indicate willingness to share their data in a published article, the proportion of authors that go on to supply that data upon request can be strikingly low. [6][7][8] While data sharing may be particularly relevant to primary research, some researchers conducting systematic reviews (SRs) have begun including data availability statements in their publications, indicating that their data is available to others.…”

“…There are various options for facilitating data sharing, including deposit in a repository, attaching supplementary files to a publication, or accepting requests through personal communication with a corresponding author. The use of data availability statements instructing readers to directly contact authors for data may be relatively infrequent compared to the other mechanisms of making data available, 4 but it is a practice that continues 4,5 . Unfortunately, in cases where authors indicate willingness to share their data in a published article, the proportion of authors that go on to supply that data upon request can be strikingly low 6–8 …”