Empirical Study of Data Sharing by Authors Publishing in PLoS Journals

Summary

Background Many 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 Findings We 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three investigators did not respond, four authors responded and refused to share their data, two email addresses were no longer valid, and one author requested further details.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. Conclusions We 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.

Key Points

• 1Only one out of ten data sets was obtained despite explicit sharing policies
• 2Authors often cited various reasons for refusal to share data
• 3Journal policies may lack enforcement mechanisms that ensure compliance
• 4Authors may struggle with providing well-annotated data due to time constraints or loss of access to original data
• 5Recommendations include journal requirements for de-identified data submission at publication time

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