Empirical Study of Data Sharing by Authors Publishing in PLoS Journals

Abstract

BackgroundMany journals now require authors share their data with other investigators, either by depositing the data in a public repository or making it freely available upon request. These policies are explicit, but remain largely untested. We sought to determine how well authors comply with such policies by requesting data from authors who had published in one of two journals with clear data sharing policies.Methods and FindingsWe requested data from ten investigators who had published in either PLoS Medicine or PLoS Clinical Trials. All responses were carefully documented. In the event that we were refused data, we reminded authors of the journal's data sharing guidelines. If we did not receive a response to our initial request, a second request was made. Following the ten requests for raw data, three investigators did not respond, four authors responded and refused to share their data, two email addresses were no longer valid, and one author requested further details. A reminder of PLoS's explicit requirement that authors share data did not change the reply from the four authors who initially refused. Only one author sent an original data set.ConclusionsWe received only one of ten raw data sets requested. This suggests that journal policies requiring data sharing do not lead to authors making their data sets available to independent investigators.

Data Sharing Mandates, Developmental Science, and Responsibly Supporting Authors

“…First, researchers tend to be unwilling to share, as even authors who publish in journals that mandate sharing pervasively do not share (Savage and Vickers 2009;Fecher et al 2015). To complicate matters, those who are willing also tend to be ineffective sharers (see Tenopir et al 2011).…”

What Not to Keep: Not All Data Has Future Research Value

“…Savage and Vickers [7] argue that sometimes the ability to reuse datasets is hindered in part by suboptimal metadata. Descriptive metadata must accompany research data to ensure that future researchers will be able to understand and interpret the dataset.…”

Forgotten treasures: the fate of data in animal behavior studies

“…Furthermore, despite journal policies, it is not clear if authors comply. Savage and Vickers (2009) asked authors of articles published in the PLoS journals to share their datasets and, contrary to the journal, an impressive portion of authors refused to do so (see also Wicherts et al, 2006;Alsheikh-Ali et al, 2011). In 2014, perhaps as a reaction to those issues, PLoS journals started to require authors to deposit their data in publicly assessable repositories prior to publication (Bloom et al, 2014).…”

“…Additionally, funding agencies also commonly require that authors share data of publications (Costello, 2009). On the other hand, if data management plans are based solely on journal or funding requirements, a significant amount of data may be lost (Savage & Vickers, 2009). Proper data stewardship and sharing is good scientific practice and should therefore not be viewed simply as a mandatory requirement to fulfill (Costello, 2009;Piwowar & Vision, 2013).…”