Reading the fine print: A review and analysis of business journals’ data sharing policies

Abstract

Business librarians offer many data services to their researchers. These services are often focused more on discovery, visualization, and analysis than general data management. But, with the replication crisis facing many business disciplines, there is a need for business librarians to offer more data sharing and general data management support to their researchers. To find evidence of this data need, 146 business journal’s data sharing policies were reviewed and analyzed to uncover meaningful trends in business research. Results of the study indicate data sharing is not mandated by business journals. However, data sharing is often encouraged and recommended. This journal policy content analysis provides evidence that business researchers have opportunities to share their research data, and with the right data management support, business librarians can play a significant role in improving the data sharing behaviors of business researchers.

Keywords:

• Data management
• data sharing
• policy
• replication
• reproducibility

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Christina Peterson from University of Tennessee’s Research Computing Support for her insight and guidance in our data analysis. We would also like to thank our friend and mentor, Dr. Rachel Fleming-May for her encouragement throughout this process. Additionally, we thank Bobray Bordelon and Celia Ross for their patience and generosity amid our deadline extension due to COVID-19. And most importantly, we thank the reviewers and editors for their keen eye and constructive feedback.