New Research Article: Mandated Data Archiving Greatly Improves Access to Research Data

The following article was added to the arXiv database on January 16, 2013.

Title

Mandated Data Archiving Greatly Improves Access to Research Data

Authors

Timothy H. Vines
University of British Columbia
Rose L. Andrew
University of British Columbia
Dan G. Bock
University of British Columbia
Michelle T. Franklin
University of British Columbia
Kimberly J. Gilbert
University of British Columbia
Nolan C. Kane
University of British Columbia
University of Colorado at Boulder
Jean-Sébastien Moore
University of British Columbia
Brook T. Moyers
University of British Columbia
Sébastien Renaut
University of British Columbia
Diana J. Rennison
University of British Columbia
Thor Veen
University of British Columbia
Sam Yeaman
University of British Columbia

Source

via ArXiv

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 a thousand-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. 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 a thousand 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 about 8 days 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.

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