Mandated data archiving greatly improves access to research data

Title
Mandated data archiving greatly improves access to research data
Publication Date
2013
Author(s)
Vines, Timothy H
Andrew, Rose
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0099-8336
Email: randre20@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:randre20
Veen, Thor
Yeaman, Sam
Bock, Dan G
Franklin, Michelle T
Gilbert, Kimberly J
Kane, Nolan C
Moore, Jean-Sebastien
Moyers, Brook T
Renault, Sebastien
Rennison, Diana J
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Place of publication
United States of America
DOI
10.1096/fj.12-218164
UNE publication id
une:15911
Abstract
The data underlying scientific papers should be accessible to researchers both now and in the future, but how best can we ensure that these data are available? Here we examine the effectiveness of four approaches to data archiving: no stated archiving policy, recommending (but not requiring) archiving, and two versions of mandating data deposition at acceptance. We control for differences between data types by trying to obtain data from papers that use a single, widespread population genetic analysis, STRUCTURE. At one extreme, we found that mandated data archiving policies that require the inclusion of a data availability statement in the manuscript improve the odds of finding the data online almost 1000-fold compared to having no policy. However, archiving rates at journals with less stringent policies were only very slightly higher than those with no policy at all. We also assessed the effectiveness of asking for data directly from authors and obtained over half of the requested datasets, albeit with ~8 d delay and some disagreement with authors. Given the long-term benefits of data accessibility to the academic community, we believe that journal-based mandatory data archiving policies and mandatory data availability statements should be more widely adopted.
Link
Citation
FASEB Journal, 27(4), p. 1304-1308
ISSN
1530-6860
0892-6638
Start page
1304
End page
1308

Files:

NameSizeformatDescriptionLink