Effect of impact factor and discipline on journal data sharing policies

ABSTRACT

Data sharing is crucial to the advancement of science because it facilitates collaboration, transparency, reproducibility, criticism, and re-analysis. Publishers are well-positioned to promote sharing of research data by implementing data sharing policies. While there is an increasing trend toward requiring data sharing, not all journals mandate that data be shared at the time of publication. In this study, we extended previous work to analyze the data sharing policies of 447 journals across several scientific disciplines, including biology, clinical sciences, mathematics, physics, and social sciences. Our results showed that only a small percentage of journals require data sharing as a condition of publication, and that this varies across disciplines and Impact Factors. Both Impact Factors and discipline are associated with the presence of a data sharing policy. Our results suggest that journals with higher Impact Factors are more likely to have data sharing policies; use shared data in peer review; require deposit of specific data types into publicly available data banks; and refer to reproducibility as a rationale for sharing data. Biological science journals are more likely than social science and mathematics journals to require data sharing.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• data management
• publication ethics
• research ethics
• research integrity
• reproducibility
• responsible conduct of research

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Intramural Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH). It does not represent the views of the NIEHS, NIH, or the U.S. government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [ZIAES102646-10].